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A SUBMAKINE VESSEL IN BATTLE. 

The" Argonaut" may approach her encmij loith only her observing toxoer above the surface, and as 
this is armored and presents such a small target it could not be hit with a ball of sufficient caliber to do 
any harm ; or she may approach on the bottom and rise up under the enemy if at anchor, and secure a 
time-fuse torpedo to her bottom ; or she ynay be fitted with tubes to fire automobile torpedoes. In the 
latter case she need not approach nearer than 300 or 400 yards. 



1 



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THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 



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BOYS BOOK 

OF 

INVENTIONS 

STORIES OF THE WONDERS 
OF MODERN SCIENCE 

RAY STANNARD BAKER 



y 




NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY dc McCLURE Co 



1 



8 




43059 

Copyright, 1899, by 

DOUBLEDAY & McClURE Co. 



WO COPIES RECEIVED. 




SECOND COPVi 



L 




CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 

I. A Voyage on the Bottom of the Sea 
II. Liquid Air .... 

III. Telegraphing without Wires 

IV. The Modern Motor Vehicle 
V. X-Ray Photography 

VI. Tailless Kites 
VII. The Story of the Phonograph 
VIII. The Modern Skyscraper 
IX. Through the Air . 



1 
43 
79 

121 
173 
207 
251 
283 
323 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

A Submarine Vessel in Battle . . Frontispiece 

At the Bottom of the Atlantic .... 1 

The " Argonaut " Sailing on the Surface . . 3 

Submerging the "Argonaut" .... 8 
The "Argonaut" Submerged — A Scene in the 

Living-room 11 

Fish Looking in at the Window of the " Argo- 
naut " 14 

The "Argonaut" in Dry-dock .... 16 

Amidships Cross Section of the "Argonaut" . 18 

Resting under the Sea 21 

Simon Lake 23 

The Submarine Boat "Argonaut" on a Wrecking 

Expedition 25 

Diver Leaving the "Argonaut" under Water . 30 
Cutting a Cable Brought up through the Door 

OF the Diver's Compartmpjnt .... 31 
Longitudinal Section of the Lake Submarine 

Boat "Argonaut" 34 

The "Argonaut" in the Pearl, Sponge, or Coral 

Fisheries 35 

The "Argonaut, Junior" 38 

Burning Felt with Liquid Air .... 42 
Some of the Machinery used by Mr. Tripler for 

Making Liquid Air 47 

Filtered Liquid Air in a Dewar Bulb, and Liquid 

Air in an Ordinary Glass Bulb ... 51 



LIST OF ILLUSTIiATlONS. 



Mr. Tripler Allowing the Liquid Air to Flow 

FROM THE LiQUEFIER . 

Possible Method of Cauterization with Liquid 

Air . . , 
Liquid Air Boiling on a Block of Ice 
Liquid Air over Fire 
An Icicle of Frozen Alcohol 
Hanging from a Block op Frozen Mercury 
Driving a Nail with a Hammer made of Mer 

CORY Frozen by Liquid Air 
Liquid Air in Water 
Iron and Copper Tubes Burst by Explosion of 

Liquid Air with Oily Waste 
Burning Steel in an Ice Tumbler partly Fillei 

WITH Liquid Air 
Running an Engine with Liquid Air 
Charles E. Tripler 
SiGNOR Marconi and His Earlier Apparatus for 

Telegraphing without Wires 
The Wireless Telegraph Station at Poole, Eng- 
land, Showing Sending and Receiving Instru- 
ments. In Right-hand Corner is the Copper 
Reflector Used in Directing Waves 
The Royal Yacht "Osborne," from which the 
Prince of Wales Telegraphed without Wires 
Mast and Station at South Foreland, near 
Dover, England, Used by Marconi in Tele- 
graphing without Wires across the Channel 
to Boulogne, France 
The Goodwin Sands Lightship 
William Marconi and His Assistant, A. E. Bul- 

LOCKE 

South Foreland, the English Station from which 
Messages were Sent without Wires to Bou- 



53 

56 
57 
59 
60 
61 

63 
64 

67 

68 
71 

74 

78 

81 
85 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



LOGNE, France, Thirty-two Miles away. The 
Mast Supporting the Vertical Wire is Seen 
ON THE Edge of the Cliff .... 97 
The Apparatus Employed at South Foreland 
Lighthouse for Communicating with the Good- 
win Sands Lightship and with Boulogne . 103 
The Mast and Station at Boulogne, France, Used 
BY Marconi in Telegraphing without Wires 

across the Channel 109 

Transmitting Instrument at Boulogne Station . 115 
M. Jenatzy and His ''Never Content," Making 

Sixty-six Miles an Hour 120 

A French Touring Cart, Driven by Gasolene . 122 
A Motor Tally-Ho, Propelled by Stored Elec- 
tricity . . . 123 

A Typical American Electric Carriage . . 125 
A Light Runabout, Driven by Gasolene . . 12G 

The Serpollet Steam Cab 127 

Morris & Salvin's "Electrobat" .... 127 
A Daimler Petroleum-engine Carriage . , 128 

The Serpollet Steam Carriage .... 129 
DuRYEA Motor Wagon, Winner of the Chicago 

"Times-Herald" Race, November 28, 1895 . 129 

An Electric Hansom Cab 131 

Fetching the Doctor. Already Physicians have 
Found the Automobile of Special Service to 

Them 133 

A Daimler Motor Carriage near Fifth Avenue 

AND Fifty-eighth Street, New York . . 137 
Models of the Motor Ambulance, Motor Tri- 
cycle, AND Motor Omnibus now Coming into 

Use 141 

The Training Course for Automobile Drivers at 

AUBERVILLIERS, NEAR PaRIS .... 145 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. - 

PAGE 

A Motor Fire-engine. The Largest Fire-engine 

IN THE World 149 

A Typical Motor Truck. Motive Power, Com- 
pressed Air 153 

A Horseless Ambulance on the Battlefield . 159 

A Daimler Motor Carriage on the Pont au 

Change, Paris 1G5 

Photograph of a Lady's Hand, Showing the Bones, 
and a Ring on the Third Finger, with Faint 
Outlines of the Flesh 172 

Dr. William Konrad Rontgen, Discoverer of the 

X-Rays 175 

Coins Photographed inside a Purse . . , 178 

Skeleton of a Frog, Photographed through the 
Flesh. The Shadings Indicate, in Addition 
TO the Bones, also the Lungs and the Cere- 
bral Lobes 179 

Picture of an Aluminum Cigar-case, Showing 

Cigars Within 183 

A Human Foot Photographed through the Sole 
of a Shoe. The Shading Shows the Pegs of 
THE Shoe as well as Traces of the Foot . 183 

Skeleton of a Fish Photographed through the 

Flesh 187 

Thomas A. Edison Experimenting with the Ront- 

GEN Rays 191 

Photographing a Foot in its Shoe by the Rontgen 
Process. — A Picture of the Actual Operation 
which Produced the Photograph Shown on 
Page 183 193 

Bones of a Human Foot Photographed through 

THE Flesh . 197 

Corkscrew, KEy, Pencil with Metallic Protector, 
and Piece of Coin, as Photographed while 
inside a Calico Pocket 199 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xiii 

PAGK 

Razor Blade Photographed through a Leather 

Case and the Razor Handle .... 201 

The Kite Buoy in Service 206 

The Eddy Tailless Kite 209 

The Eddy Tailless Kite 210 

The IIargrave Box Kite 211 

New York, East River, Brooklyn, and New York 

Bay, from a Kite 213 

City Hall Park and Broadway from a Kite . 214 

Photographic View from a Kite .... 215 

One of Captain Baden-Powell's Twelve-foot Kites 217 

The Start 219 

A Lull in the Wind. Captain Baden-Powell in 

the Basket 220 

''Will it Lift A Man?" 221 

" Up it Went" 222 

Captain Baden-Powell in the Basket Leaving the 

Ground, but still Held by Bystanders . . 223 

The Basket, Forty^ Feet from the Ground . . 226 
Empty Basket about Seventy-five Feet from the 

Ground 229 

Photographing from a Kite Line .... 233 

Dirigible Kite-drawn Bt oy 236 

Kite-drawn Buoy 237 

Fig. 1. — View of a Modern Box Kite . . . 238 

Fig. 2 —Central Truss 240 

Fig. 3. — Longitudinal Corner Spine . , . 241 

Fig. 4. — Diagonal Strut . . . . . . 242 

Fig. 5. — First Form of Bridle .... 243 

Fig. 6. — Second Form of Bridle : c, Enlarged 

Knot Loosened . . 245 

Captain* Baden-Powell Folding up a Big Kite . 247 

Sarah Bernhardt Making a Phonograph Record 250 

Scott's Phonautograph . . ... 252 

Edison's First Phonograph 254 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

I'AGE 

Cross Section of Edison's First Phonograph, 

Showing Method of Operation . . . 256 
Making a Record on One of the Early Forms of 

THE Graphophone 259 

Showing how the Record is Engraved on the 

Wax Cylinder — Much Enlarged , . . 259 

Predecessors of the Graphophone .... 261 

Bettini Spider Diaphragm Attachment . . . 264 
In a Phonograph Record Room — Making a Record 

OF Band Music 267 

A Duet with Accompaniment 271 

One of the Newest Talking Machines . . . 273 

A Modern High-class Phonograph. . . , 276 

A Phonographic Record 277 

Another View of "She Was Bred in Old Ken- 
tucky" .279 

The Tallest Building in the World . . . 282 
Realty Building, Philadelphia, as it Looked July 

30th 285 

Realty Building, Philadelphia .... 289 
The First Flag at the Summit of Realty Build- 
ing 293 

First Stonework, Sixth and Ninth Stories, Realty 

Building 297 

Rushing the Stonework on Pour Floors at On-ce. 301 
Stonework Complete First in the Middle of the 

Building 305 

Roof-building on the Realty Structure . . 309 
Detail of Steel Skeleton Work, Showing how a 

Big Building is Braced and Riveted Together 311 

Joining of Beams and Pillars .... 312 

Ready for Inside Finishing 313 

Showing Lmmensely Strong Skeleton Work of a 

Tall and Narrow Building in Boston . . 316 

Interior "Well" of a Skyscraper Looking up . 317 



LIS7' OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Professor Langley's Aerodrome in Flight : a 
View from Above 

Wing of a Soaring Bird 

Professor S. P. Langley 

Diagram of the Final Aerodrome 

Bones of a Bird's Wing and of a Human Arm — 
Showing their Close Resemblance . 

Skeletons of a Man and a Bird Drawn to the 
Same Scale, Showing the Curious Resemblance 
between Them 

Preparing to Launch the Aerodrome . 

Diagram Showing the Course of the Aerodrome 
in its Flight on the Potomac River at 
Quantigo 

The Aerodrome in Flight, May 6, 1896 

Otto Lilienthal, "The Flying Man" 

A Start from a Wall 

Lilienthal Starting from a Hill . 

Preparing for a Start from a Hill 

Soaring in a Strong Breeze . 

Descending in Still Air . 

A Descent in Still Air . 

The Descent 

Chart of One of Lilienthal's Flights 

A Safe Landing .... 



323 
324 
326 
329 

331 



332 
335 



336 
339 
342 
343 
344 
345 
346 
348 
349 
H51 
352 
354 



THE BOY^S BOOK OF 
K^YENTIOI^S. 



CHAPTEE I. 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 



Simon Lake's Submarine Boat, the ' ' Argonaut. 



irViv.-l>5.-il^-, Simon 




l^feC^^'rf^Sft^ p^ 



Lake's curious 
craft, the " Argonaut," 
is a submarine boat, 
and much more be- 
sides. She not only 
swims beneath the sur- 
face of the water and 
upon it, but she adds 
to these accomplish- 
ments the extraordi- 
nary power of diving 
deep, and rolling along 
the bottom of the sea 
on wheels. ISTo ma- 
chine ever before did 
that. Indeed, the " Argonaut " is more prop- 
erly a " sea-mo tocycle " or " sea-tricycle " than 



AT THE BOTTOM OF THE 

ATLANTIC. 

The " Argonaut " here lies sub- 
merged in twenty-eight feet of 
water. 



2 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

a boat. The inventor himself has described 
it as "a boat- wagon for riding on the bottom 
of the sea." 

In October, 1898, the " Argonaut " lay off the 
pier at Atlantic Highlands, IS^ew Jersey. She 
had just finished a tedious voyage from Balti- 
more, where she was built, and she was quietly 
anchored from a barrel buoy. Mr. Lake had 
invited Mr. Stevens, the artist, and myself to 
make a trip with him on the bottom of the 
ocean. As we walked up the pier, we watched 
eagerly for the first glimpse of the wonderful 
sea-wagon of which we had heard so many 
strange stories. 

" There she lies," said Mr. Lake, not without 
a touch of pride in his voice. 

But all we could see was a great black letter 
A, made of gas-pipe, rising forty feet above the 
water. A flag rippled at its summit. As we 
drew nearer, we saAV that the big A rested on 
a small oblong deck, shouldering deep in the 
water. At the center of this deck there was a 
slightly higher platform surmounted by an 
iron tower about the size of a small barrel. A 
curious brass cap which covered the top of the 
tower was tilted back, and as our boat ran 
alongside, a man stuck his head up over the 
rim and sang out, 

''Ahoy there! " 




THE "ARGONAUT SAILING ON THE SUllFACE. 
From a photograph. 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 5 

A considerable sea was running, but I ob- 
served that the ' ' Argonaut ' ' was planted as 
firmly in the water as a stone pillar, the big 
waves splitting over her without imparting 
any perceptible motion. 

''She weighs fifty-seven tons," said Mr. 
Lake, ' ' and there are only two or three tons 
above water. I never have seen the time when 
she rolled." 

We scrambled up on the little platform and 
peered down through the open tower — " con- 
ning- tower," Mr. Lake called it — into the 
depths of the ship below. Wilson, the engineer, 
had started the fire in his gasolene engine, and 
it wasn't long before we saw a white plume of 
steam rising from the very summit of the gas- 
pipe frame above us. 

"This leg of the A," explained Mr. Lake, 
''carries off the burnt gases, and this one 
brings in the fresh air while we are submerged. 
You see the pipes are tall enough, so that we 
can use them until we are more than fifty feet 
under water. Below that we have to depend 
on the compressed air in our tanks, or on a 
hose reaching from the upper end of the pipe 
to a buoy on the surface." 

Mr. Lake had taken his place at the wheel, 
and we were going ahead slowly, steering 
straight across the bay toward Sandy Hook 



G THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

and deeper water. The ' ' Argonaut ' ' makes 
about fiNQ knots an hour on the surface, but 
when she gets deep down on the sea bottom, 
where she belongs, she can spin along more 
rapidly. 

"Are you ready to go down?" asked Mr. 
Lake. 

The waves were already washing entirely 
over the lower platform and occasionally break- 
ing around our feet, but we both nodded sol- 
emnly. 

'' Open the center compartments," Mr. Lake 
shouted down the conning tower. " I'm flood- 
ing the air ballast compartments," he ex- 
plained. " Usually we submerge by letting 
down two half -ton iron weights and then, after 
admitting enough water to overcome our buoy- 
ancy, we can readily pull the boat to the bot- 
tom by winding in on the weight cables. Un- 
fortunately we have lost one of the weights, 
and so we have to depend entirely on the 
compartments. ' ' 

The '^Argonaut" was slowly sinking under 
the water. We became momentarily more im- 
pressed with the extreme smallness of the craft 
to which we were trusting our lives. The little 
platform around the conning tower on which 
we stood^in reality the top of the gasolene 
tank — was scarcely a half-dozen feet across, 



.1 VOYAGIJ ON THE B0TT03I OF THE SEA. 7 

and the " Argonaut" herself was only thirty-six 
feet h)ng. Her sides had ah-eady faded out of 
sight, but not before we had seen how solidly 
they were built, all of steel, riveted and re- 
enforced, so that the wonder grew how such a 
tremendous Aveight, when submerged, could 
ever again be raised. 

''We had to give lier immense strength," 
said Mr. Lake, '' to resist the water pressure at 
great depths. She is built of the same thick- 
ness of steel as the government used for the 
2,000-ton cruisers 'Detroit' and 'Montgom- 
ery.' She'll stand a hundred feet, although 
we never took her deeper than fifty. We like 
to keep our margins safe. " 

I think we made some inquiries about the 
safety of submarine boats in general. Other 
air compartments had been opened, and we 
had settled so far down that the waves dashed 
repeatedly over the platform on which we 
stood — and the conning-tower was still wide 
open, inviting a sudden engulfing rush of 
water. 

'' You mustn't confuse the ' Argonaut ' with 
ordinary submarine boats," said Mr. Lake. 
' ' She is quite different and much safer. When 
I fi.rst began experimenting, I saw that the 
greatest problem of submarine navigation was 
the inability to steer accurately when sub- 



8 ♦ THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




SUBMERGING THE "ARGONAUT." 

The man is looking up through the canning-tower at the compass. 

merged. You see, below the surface of the 
water you have four directions in which you 
may go instead of two, as on the surface, and 
no one has yet succeeded in inventing a rudder 
that will keep a submarine boat in a steady 
course, so that it will not leap out of water at 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEI. 9 

one moment and plunge to the bottom at the 
next. I simply gave up the problem and de- 
cided to run on the bottom, where I can steer 
as easily as if I were on shore." 

That was originality; it was so simple that 
no one ever had dreamed of trying it before. 

'^I think we'd better go below," said Mr. 
Lake, Avith a trace of haste in his voice. 

I went first, slipping hand over hand down 
the ladder. Mr. Stevens followed, and a. great 
wave came slapping in after him, sousing down 
over his shoulders. Mr. Lake quickly shut 
down the conning-tower cap and screwed it 
fast over its rubber rims. 

We found ourselves in a long, narrow com- 
partment, dimly illuminated by yellowish-green 
light from the little, round glass windows. 
The stern was filled with Wilson's gasolene 
engine and the electric motor, and in front of 
us, toward the bow, we could see through the 
heavy steel doorways of the divers' compart- 
ment into the lookout-room, where there was a 
single round eye of light. 

'' She's almost under," said Mr. Lake. 

I climbed up the ladder of the conning-tower 
and looked out through one of the glass ports. 
My eyes were just even with the surface of the 
water. In the trough of the waves I could 
catch a glimpse of the distant sunny shores of 



10 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

New Jersey, and here and there, off toward 
Staten Island, the bright sails of oyster smacks. 
Then the next wave came driving and foaming 
entirely over the top of the little vessel, and I 
could see the curiousl}^ beautiful sheen of the 
bright summit of the water above us. It was 
a most impressive sight. ISTot many people 
ever have had the opportunity of looking 
calmly upon the surface of the sea from below. 
Mr. Lake told me that in very clear water it 
Avas difficult to tell just where the air left off 
and the water began; bub in the muddy bay, 
where we were going down, the surface looked 
like a peculiarly clear, greenish pane of glass 
moving straight up and down, not forward, as 
the waves appear to move when seen from 
above. 

Now we were entirely under water. The 
ripping noises that the waves had made in 
beating against the upper structure of the boat 
had "Ceased. As I looked through the thick 
glass port, the water was only three inches 
from my eyes, and I could see thousands of 
dainty, semi-translucent jelly-fish floating 
about us lightly as thistle down. They gath- 
ered in the eddy behind the conning-tower in 
great numbers, bumping up sociably against 
one another, and darting up and down with 
each gentle movement of the water. And I 




THE "argonaut" SUBMERGED — A SCENE IN THE LIVING-ROOM. 



On the left, Mr. Lake is seated; the steersman is in the center. The feet of the lookout in the 
conning-tower can be seen on the ladder to the right. 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 13 

realized that we were in the domain of the 
fishes. 

I returned to the bottom of the boat, to find 
that it was brilliantly lighted by electricity, 
and to have my ears pain me sharply. 

'^You see, the air is beginning to come 
down," said Jim, the first mate, ''and we are 
getting a little pressure." 

I held up my hand and felt the strong gust 
which was being drawn down through the tall 
air-pipe above us. It was comforting to know 
that the air arrangements were in working 
order. 

Mr. Lake now hung a small mirror at an 
angle of forty-five degrees, just at the bottom 
of the conning- tower, and stepped back to the 
steering wheel. Upon looking into the mirror 
he could see the reflection of the compass, 
which is placed at the very highest tip of the 
brass binnacle that crowns the conning-tower. 

''We can't use a compass down here," said 
Mr. Lake, ' ' because there is too much ma- 
chinery and steel. ' ' 

Mr. Lake has found by repeated experiments 
that the compass points as accurately under 
water as on the surface. 

Jim, the mate, brought the government 
chart, and Mr. Lake announced that we were 
heading directly for Sandy Hook and the open 



14 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




FISH LOOKING IN AT THE WINDOW OF THE "ARGONAUT." 

Both pictures are from photographs taken by Mr. Lake out of the forward 
lookout window of the '^ Argonaut, ^^ while she was running up the Patapsco 
River to Baltimore. 



ocean. But we had not yet reached the bot- 
tom, and John was busily opening air compart- 
ments and letting in more water. I went 
forward to the little steel cubby-hole in the 
extreme prow of the boat, and looked out 
through the watch-port. The water had 
grown denser and yellower, and I couldn't see 
much beyond the dim outlines of the ship's 
spar reaching out forward. Jim said that he 
had often seen fishes come swimming up won- 
deringly to gaze into the port. They would 
remain quite motionless until he stirred his 
head, and then they vanished instantly. Mr. 
Lake has a remarkable ])hotograph wliich he 
took of a visiting fish, and Wilson tells of nur- 
turing a queer flat crab for days in the crevice 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 15 

of one of the view-holes. As I turned from 
the watch-port, my eye fell on an everyday- 
looking telephone, with the receiver comfort- 
ably hung up next the steel walls. 

'' Oh, yes," said Jim, ^' we have all the mod- 
ern conveniences. That's for telephoning to 
the main part of the boat when the diver's com- 
partment is closed and we can't get through." 

He also showed me a complex system of call- 
bells by means of which the man at the look- 
out could direct the engineer. 

'^ When we are down in unknown waters," 
he said, ' ' we have a big electric search-light 
which points out the way. ' ' 

At that moment I felt a faint jolt, and Mr. 
Lake said that we were on the bottom of the 
sea, thirty feet below the surface. 

'"' The bottom here is very muddy," he said, 
'^and we are only resting a few hundred 
pounds' weight on our wheels. By taking in 
or pumping out water we can press down on 
the bottom like a locomotive or like a feather. 
Where we have good hard sand to run on we 
use our wheels for propelling the boat; but m 
mud like this, where there's nothing to get 
hold of, we make our propeller do the work." 

Here we were running as comfortably along 
the bottom of Sandy Hook Bay as we would 
ride in a Broadway car, and with quite as much 



16 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




THE "argonaut" IN DRY-DOCK. 

Draivn from photographs by Mr. Lake. The door of the diver's compart- 
ment, just under the bow, is open, ajid resting on some of the keel-blocks. 
Through this door the divers leave the boat when it is submerged, compressed 
air in the compartment preventing the entrance of water. 

safety. Wilson, who was of a musical turn, 
was whistling "Down went McGinty," and 
Mr. Lake, with his hands on the pilot wheel, 
put in an occasional word about his marvelous 
invention. On the wall opposite there was a 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 17 

row of dials which told automatically every 
fact about our condition that the most nervous 
of men could wish to know. One of them 
shows the pressure of air in the main compart- 
ment of the boat, another registers vacuum, 
and when both are at zero, Mr. Lake knows 
that the pressure of the air is normal, the same 
as it is on the surface, and he tries to maintain 
it in this condition. There are also a cyclo- 
meter, not unlike those used on bicycles, to 
show how far the boat travels on its wheels; a 
depth gauge which keeps us accurately in- 
formed as to the depth of the boat in the 
water; and a declension indicator. By the long 
finger of the declension dial we could tell 
whether we were going up hill or down. Once, 
while we were out, there was a sudden sharp 
shock, the pointer leaped back, and then quiv- 
ered steady again. Mr. Lake said that we had 
probably struck a bit of wreckage or an em- 
bankment, but the ^^ Argonaut" was running 
so lightly that she had leaped up jauntily and 
slid over the obstruction. 

Strange things has Mr. Lake discovered 
about the bottom of the sea. He has found 
that nearly all sea roads are level, a fact of 
great importance to sea carriages like the 
'' Argonaut." 

' ' People get the impression from the sea- 



18 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS, 




AMIDSHIPS CROSS SECTION OF THE "ARGONAUT." 

bottom contours of the school-books," he says, 
*^'that the ocean is filled with vast mountain 
ranges and deep valleys. As a matter of 
fact, these contours, in representing thousands 
of miles of width on a printed page, greatly 
exaggerate the depth, which at its greatest is 
only a few thousand feet, thus giving a very 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 19 

false idea. Some shores slope more than others, 
bat I venture to say that there are few spots 
on the bottom of the Atlantic that would not 
be called level if they were bare of water. ' ' 

We had been keeping our eyes on the depth 
dial, the most fascinating and interesting of 
any of the number. It showed that we were 
going down, down, down. When we had been 
submerged for more than an hour, and there 
was thirty feet of yellowish-green ocean over 
our heads, Mr. Lake suddenly ordered the ma- 
chinery stopped. The clacking noises of the 
dynamo ceased, and the electric lights blinked 
out, leaving us at once in almost absolute dark- 
ness and silence. Before this we had found it 
hard to realize that we were on the bottom of 
the ocean ; now it came upon us suddenly, and 
not without a touch of awe. This absence of 
sound and light, this unchanging motionless- 
ness and coolness, this absolute negation— this 
was the bottom of the sea. It lasted only a 
moment, but in that moment we realized 
acutely the meaning and joy of sunshine and 
moving winds, trees, and the world of men. 

A minute light twinkled out like a star, and 
then another and another, until the boat was 
bright again, and we knew that among the 
other wonders of this most astonishing of in- 
ventions there was storage electricity which 



20 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

would keep the boat illuminated for hours with- 
out so much as a single turn of the dynamo. 
"With the stoppage of the engine the air supply 
from above had ceased, but Mr. Lake laid his 
hand on the steel wall above us, where, he said, 
there was enough air compressed to last us all 
for two days should anything happen. 

Indeed, the possibility of ' ' something hap- 
pening ' ' had been lurking in our minds ever 
since we started. 

'' What if your engine should break down so 
that you couldn't pump the water out of the 
air compartments ? " I asked. 

^^ Here we have hand pumps," said Mr. Lake 
promptly, ^'and if those failed, a single touch 
of this lever would release our lead keel, which 
weighs three thousand pounds, and up we 
would go like a rocket. ' ' 

I questioned further, only to find that every 
imaginable contingency, and some that were 
not at all imaginable to the uninitiated, had 
been absolutely provided for by the genius of 
the inventor. And everything from the gaso- 
lene engine to the hand pump was as compact 
and ingenious as the mechanism of a watch. 
Moreover, the boat was not crowded ; we had 
plenty of room to move around and to sleep, 
if we wished, to say nothing of eating. 

Indeed, John had brought out the kerosene 




8 ^ 



"S S 



II 
Is 

Is 



^ 8 






■to o g 

« it 



<fc.o 



A VOYAGE ON THE B0TT03I OF THE SEA. 28 











M 




1*'.^^ 


m^- 


r 1 


P% ■ ■ ^; 


';;i 


I I 





SIMON LAKE. 

Drawn from life by W. D. Stevens at Atlantic Highlands, October 16, 1898. 

stove, and was making coffee while Jim cut the 
pumpkin pie. 

''This isn't Delmonico's," said Jim, ''but 
we're serving a lunch that Delmonico's couldn't 
serve — a submarine lunch." 

By this time the novelty was wearing off, 
and we sat there at the bottom of the sea, 



24 THE BOY'S BOOK OF mVENTIONS. 

drinking our coffee with as much unconcern as 
though we were in an uptown restaurant. For 
the first time since we started, Mr. Lake sat 
down, and we had an opportunity of talking 
with him at leisure. He is a stout-shouldered, 
powerfully built man in the prime of life, a 
man of cool common sense, a practical man, 
who is also an inventor. And he talks frankly 
and convincingly and yet modestly of his ac- 
complishment. 

''When I was ten years old," he said, "I 
read Jules Yerne's ' Twenty Thousand Leagues 
under the Sea,' and I have been working on 
submarine boats ever since. ' ' 

At seventeen he invented a mechanical move- 
ment; at twenty he was selling a steering gear 
which he had just patented. In 1894 he began 
to build his first submarine boat. Like the 
practical man he was, he decided to make a 
practical boat. Most submarine-boat building, 
he thinks, is like Arctic exploration. It Avould 
be a nice thing to find the North Pole, but it 
wouldn't be of much nse after it was found. 

''I don't depend on the government to buy 
my boat," he said, '' although I am sure it will 
be indispensable in Avarfare for placing tor- 
pedoes, cutting cables, and so on. The main 
object of boats of the ' Argonaut ' type is com- 
mercial, to assist in raising sunken vessels, 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 27 

removing the treasure from wrecks, placing 
diflBcult submarine foundations, and any kind 
of work that requires diving. There are mil- 
lions of gold in old wrecks right around ]^ew 
York, and I confidently believe that we can 
get some of it. ' ' 

Having finished our lunch, Mr. Lake prepared 
to show us something about the practical oper- 
ations of the '^ Argonaut." It had been a 
good deal of a mystery to us how workmen 
penned up in a submarine boat could expect to 
recover gold from wrecks in the water outside, 
or to place torpedoes, or to pick up cables, or 
to catch fish and clams as the crew of the 
^' Argonaut " often had done. 

'^ We simply open the door, and the diver 
wallis out on the bottom of the sea," Mr. 
Lake said, quite as if he was conveying the 
most ordinary information. 

At first it seemed incredible; but Mr. Lake 
showed us the heavily riveted door in the bot- 
tom of the diver's little room. Then he in- 
vited us inside with Wilson, who, besides being 
an engineer, is also an expert diver. The mas- 
sive steel doors of the room were closed and 
barred, and then Mr. Lake turned a cock, and 
the air rushed in under high pressure. At 
once our ears began to throb, and it seemed as 
if the ear-drums would burst inward. 



38 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

"" Keep swallowing," said Wilson, the diver. 

As soon as we applied this remedy the pain 
in our ears was relieved ; but the general sensa- 
tion of increased air pressure, while exhilarat- 
ing, was still most uncomfortable. The finger 
on the pressure dial kept creeping up and up, 
until it showed that the air pressure inside of 
the compartment was nearly equal to the water 
pressure without. Then Wilson opened a cock 
in the door. Instantly the water gushed in, 
and for a single instant we expected to be 
drowned there like rats in a trap. 

'' This is really very simple," Mr. Lake was 
saying calmly ; ' ' when the pressure of the air 
within is the same as that of the water with- 
out, no water can enter." 

With that Wilson dropped the iron door, 
and there lay the muddy bottom of the sea 
within touch of a man's hand. It was all easy 
enough to understand, and yet it seemed im- 
possible, even as we saw it with our own eyes. 

Mr. Lake stooped down and picked up a 
wooden rod having a sharp hook at the end. 
This he pulled along the bottom. 

'' You see how easily we can pick up a cable 
and cut it," he said. '^ Why, the ]N"ew York 
telegraph cables, the most important in the 
world, are all within a few miles of this spot. 
The mine wires during the war were near here. 




DIVER LEAVING THE " ARGONAUT " UNDER WATER, 



The compartment from which the divers descend is heavily charged 
with compressed air to prevent the water from entering when the door 
is opened into the sea, the pressure being increased one atmosphere, 
or fifteen pounds, to the square inch for every thirty-five feet of descent 
below the surface. 




CUTTING A CABLE BROUGHT UP THROUGH THE DOOR 
OF THE diver's COMPARTMENT. 



From a photograph. 



A VOYAGE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 33 

We could have crawled along and cut every 
one of them, and no one ever would have been 
the wiser. More than that, if the ' Argonaut ' 
had been at Santiago, we could have cleared 
the harbor of Spanish mines within forty-eight 
hours without the possibility of discovery. 
And after that" — Mr. Lake grew enthusiastic 
— ''we could have crept along until we were 
just under one of the Spanish ships. Then our 
divers would have stepped out and deliberately 
set mines or even fastened torpedoes to the bot- 
toms of the ships. When the work was done, 
we could have backed away, playing out our 
wires, until we were well out of reach of the 
effects of an explosion. And then, a connec- 
tion of wires, and Sampson would have been 
saved the trouble of smashing Cervera. ' ' 

Indeed, it seemed the simplest thing in the 
world. 

'' All you have to do when you want a good 
mess of oysters or clams, ' ' Wilson put in, ' ' is 
to reach down and pick 'em." 

^'Yes," added Mr. Lake, ''the 'Argonaut' 

or a boat like it will some day be the means of 

helping science to a much better knowledge of 

the wonders of the bottom of the sea. Think 

what treasures a scientist could get as the 

' Argonaut ' crawled slowly along the bottom 

with this door open." 
3 



34 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




LONGITUDINAL SECTION OP THE LAKE SUBMARINE BOAT 
"ARGONAUT." 

A, gasolene engine, thirty horse-power, which supplies all the power used in 
moving and operating the boat. BB, the two anchor weights used in sinking 
the boat. C, one of the two driving wheels. E, rudder and guiding wheel. 
FFFF, the " living-room," in which are placed the engine and all the other ma- 
chinery and apparatus for operating the boat. G, the air-lock : it affoi'ds pas- 
sage to and from the diverts room without reducing the air-pressure. H, the 
diverts room, whence free passage is secured into the sea. K, boiv compartment 
where the search-light is placed. L, the forward lookout compartment. MM, gas- 
olene tanks. NN, compressed-air reservoirs. 0000, tcater-ballast compart- 
ments. PP, permanent keel. PQ, drop keel. P, dynamo. S, conning-tower. 
T, binnacle. The compass in this binnacle is in direct view from the outside 
steering gear ; but from the conning-toicer it is read by reflection. U, outside 
steering gear. In general form the " Argonaut " is cylindrical, or cigar-shaped, 
with a very bluff boio and a pointed stern, and is thirty-six feet long. 

But the " Argonaut's " most serious work is 
in wrecking. Mr. Lake explained hoAV diffi- 
culfc it was for divers to go down to wrecks 
from the surface, owing to the great weight of 
air-tubing and life-lines, and how, if the water 
was at all rough, the attendants' boat usually 
bobbed up and down so violently that it be- 
came dangerous for a diver to remain below. 



LIQUID AIR. 45 

$3,000. A little later he reduced the cost to 
$500 a pint, and the whole scientific world 
rang with the achievement. 

When I visited Mr. Tripler's laboratory I 
saw five gallons of liquid air poured out like so 
much water. It was made at the rate of fifty 
gallons a day, and it cost, perhaps, twenty 
cents a gallon. JS^ot long ago Mr. Tripler per- 
formed some of his experiments before a meet- 
ing of distinguished scientists at the American 
Museum of JSTatural History, It so happened 
that among those present was M. Pictet, the 
^^ father of liquid air." When he saw the 
prodigal way in which Mr. Tripler poured out 
the precious liquid, he rose solemnly and shook 
Mr. Tripler's hand. "It is a grand exhibi- 
tion," he exclaimed in French; " the grandest 
exhibition I ever have seen." 

The principle involved in air liquefaction is 
exceedingly simple, although its application 
has sorely puzzled more than one wise man. 
When air is compressed it gives out its heat. 
Any one who has inflated a bicycle tire has felt 
the pump grow warm under his hand. When 
the pressure is removed and the gas expands, it 
must take back from somewhere the heat which 
it gave out. That is, it must produce cold. 

Professor Dewar applied this simple prin- 
ciple in all his experiments. He compressed 



46 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

nitrous oxide gas and ethylene gas, and by ex- 
panding them suddenly in a specially con- 
structed ap})aratus he produced a degree of cold 
which liquefied air almost instantly. 

But nitrous oxide and ethylene are exceed- 
ingly expensive and dangerous, so that the 
product which Professor Dewar drew off was 
worth more than its weight in gold. 

At the earliest announcement of the lique- 
faction of air Mr. Tripler had seen, with the 
quick imagination of the inventor, its tremen- 
doiis possibilities as a power-generator, and he 
began his experiments immediately. After 
futile attempts to utilize various gases for the 
production of the necessary cold, it suddenly 
occurred to Mr. Tripler that air also was a gas. 
Wh}^ not use it for producing cold ? 

''The idea was so foolishly simple that I 
could hardly bring myself to try it," he told 
me, "but I finally fitted up an apparatus, 
turned on my air and drew it out a liquid. ' ' 

Mr. Tripler' s work-room has more the ap- 
pearance of a machine shop than a laboratory. 
It is big and airy, and filled with the busy lit- 
ter of the inventor. The huge steam boiler 
and compressor engine in one end of the room 
strike one at first as oddly disproportionate in 
size to the other machinery. Apparently there 
is nothing for all this power — it is a seventy- 



LIQUID AIR. 49 

five horse-power plant — to work upon; it is 
hard to realize that the engine is drawing its 
raw material from the very room in which we 
are walking and breathing. Indeed, the ap- 
paratus where the air is actually liquefied is 
nothing but a felt and canvas-covered tube 
about as large around as a small barrel and 
perhaps fifteen feet high. The lower end is 
set the height of a man's shoulders above the 
floor, and there is a little spout below, from 
which, upon opening a frosty valve, the liquid 
air may be seen bursting out through a cloud 
of icy mist. I asked the old engineer who has 
been with Mr. Tripler for years, what was in- 
side this mysterious swathed tube. 

"■ It's full of pipes," he said. 

I asked Mr. Tripler the same question. 

^^ Pipes," was his answer — *' pipes and coils 
with especially constructed valves — that's all 
there is to it. ' ' 

So I investigated the pipes. Two sets led 
back to the compressor engine, and Mr. Tripler 
explained that they both carried air under a 
pressure of about 2,500 pounds to the square 
inch. The heat caused by the compression, had 
been removed by passing the pipes through 
coolers filled with running water, so that the 
air entered the liquefier at a temperature of 
about fifty degrees Fahrenheit. 
4 



50 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

'' One of these pipes contains the air to 
be liquefied, ' ' explained Mr. Tripler ; ' ' the 
other carries the air which is to do the lique- 
fying. By turning this valve at the bottom of 
the apparatus, I allow the air to escape through 
a small hole in the second pipe. It rushes out 
over the first pipe, expanding rapidly, and 
taking up heat. This process continues until 
such a degree of cold prevails in the first pipe 
that the air is liquefied and drips down into a 
small receptacle at the bottom. Then all I 
have to do is to turn a valve and the liquid air 
pours out, ready for use. ' ' 

Mr. Tripler says that it takes only fifteen 
or twenty minutes to get liquid air after the 
compressor engine begins to run. Professor 
Dewar always lost ninety per cent, in draw- 
ing off his product; Mr. Tripler's loss is inap- 
preciable. 

Sometimes the cold in the liquefier becomes 
so intense that the liquid air actually freezes 
hard, stopping the pipes. Wonderful as it is 
to see ice that is made of air, it is not so won- 
derful as Mr. Tripler's story of the significance 
of this phenomenon. He tells how at some re- 
mote age in the future, all of the atmosphere 
which we novr breathe will fall in drops of 
liquid, just such as he produces in his labora- 
tory, and great lakes and oceans of air will 



LIQUID AIR. 



51 




FILTEllED LIQUID AIK IN A DEW All BULB, AND LIQUID 
AIR IN AN ORDINARY GLASS BULB. 

The Deiaar bulb is composed of two bulbs with a vacuum between, which 
prevents the passage of heat, thereby protecting the liquid air so that it vapor- 
izes very slowly. The other bulb, not so protected, has collected a shaggy coat- 
ing of frost. 

form on the earth, much resembling the pres- 
ent lakes and oceans of water. 

' ' When the earth grows so cold that the air 
is liquefied," said Mr. Tripler, ''of course all 



52 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

the water on the earth will long ago have been 
frozen solid. Indeed, it will be as hard as rock 
crystal, and not unlike that substance in color 
and texture. After the air is all in the form 
of lakes or oceans, the cold will continue to 
increase until they in turn are frozen hard. 
After that the hydrogen, helium, and possibly 
some other very light gases, of which we may 
now have little knowledge, will fall in the form 
of rain, and then the world will be absolutely 
dead and inert, frozen as hard as the moon." 

This entire process of the universe is typified 
in Mr. Tripler's laboratory, where every de- 
gree of temperature, from the heat of a steam 
boiler nearly down to the cold of interstellar 
space, can be produced at any time. 

'^ When you come to think of it," says Mr. 
Tripler, "we're a good deal nearer the cold 
end of the thermometer than we are to the hot 
end. I suppose that once the earth had a 
temperature equal to that of the sun, say, 
10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It has fallen to 
an average of about sixty degrees in this lati- 
tude; that is, it has lost 9,940 degrees. We 
don't yet know just how cold the absolute cold 
really is — the final cold, the cold of interstellar 
space — but Professor Dewar thinks it is about 
461 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. If it is, 
we have only a matter of 521 degrees yet to 



iffMiiiMir' li'-^ 


- .1 - ■' .- 


1 ,^immgf^^^^^^^^^^^ 


■ ' ^ ' i 


1 


'» 

\ 


.• ; 


^ 



LIQUID AIR. 55 

lose, which is small compared with 9,940. 
Still, I don't think we have any cause to worry; 
it may take a few billion years for the world 
to reach absolute cold. ' ' 

Mr. Tripler handles his liquid air with a 
freedom that is awe-inspiring. He uses a bat- 
tered saucepan in which to draw it out of the 
liquefier, and he keeps it in a double iron can, 
not unlike an ice-cream freezer, covering the 
top with a Avad of coarse felt to keep out as 
much heat as possible. 

"You can handle liquid air with perfect 
safety," he said; "you can do almost any- 
thing with it that you can do with water, ex- 
cept to shut it up tight." 

This is not at all surprising when one re- 
members that a single cubic foot of liquid air 
contains Y48 cubic feet of air at ordinary press- 
ure — a whole hall-bedroom full, reduced to the 
space of a large pail. Its desire to expand, 
therefore, is something quite irrepressible. But 
so long as it is left open it simmers contentedly 
for hours, finally disappearing whence it came. 
There being no way to confine liquid air in any 
considerable quantity, its transportation for 
long distances is therefore an unsolved problem, 
although Mr. Tripler has sent large cans of it 
to Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia. 

"It is my belief, ' ' comments Mr. Tripler, 



56 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




POSSIBLE METHOD OF CAUTERIZATION WITH LIQUID AIR. 



'' that there will be little need of transporting 
it ; it can be made quickly and cheaply any- 
where on earth. ' ' 

Liquid air has many curious properties. It 
is nearly as heavy as water and quite as clear 
and limpid, although when seen in the open air 
it is always muffled in the dense white mist of 
evaporation which wells up over the edge of 
the receptacle in which it stands and rolls out 



LIQUID AIR. 



57 




LIQUID AIll BOILIING ON A BLOCK OF ICE. 

Compared with liquid air, the temperature of which is 312° below zero, ice at 
32' F. is as hot as a furnace, and it produces the same effect on liquid air that 
a hot fire would on water. The teapot is covered with white frost : moisture 
congealed from the atmosphere. 



along the floor in beautiful billowy clouds. 
'No other sabstance in the Avorld, unless it be 
liquid hydrogen, is as cold as liquid air, and yet 
Mr. Tripler dips his hand fearlessly into a pail 
of liquid air, but he is careful to withdraw it 
instantly. The reason that it does not freeze 
him at once is the same that enables the work- 
man to dip his hand into molten lead, the mois- 
ture of the human flesh forming a little cushion 



58 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

of vapor which keeps away for a second the 
effect of the cold or the heat. A few drops 
held in my hand for an instant felt exactly 
like a red-hot coal. It does not really burn, of 
course, but it kills, leaving a little red blister 
not unlike a burn. For this reason, one of its 
prospective uses will be for the purpose of 
cauterization in surgical cases. It is not only 
a good deal cheaper than the ordinary caustics, 
but is much more efficient, and its action can be 
absolutely controlled. Indeed, a well-known 
surgeon performed a difficult operation on a 
cancer case with liquid air furnished by Mr. 
Tripler, and reported the case to be absolutely 
cured. 

It is a curious thing to see liquid air placed 
in a teapot boiling vigorously on a block of ice, 
but it must be remembered that ice is nearly 
as much warmer than liquid air as a stove is 
warmer than water, so that it makes liquid air 
boil just as the stove makes water boil. If this 
same teapot is placed over a gas flame, a thick 
coating of ice will at once collect on the bot- 
tom between the kettle and the blaze, and no 
amount of heat seems enough to melt it. 

Alcohol freezes at so low a temperature — 
202 degrees below zero — that it has been used 
in thermometers to register all degrees of cold. 
But it will not measure the fearful cold of liquid 



LIQUID AIR. 



59 



air. I saw a cup of liquid air poured into a 
tumbler partly iilled with 
alcohol. Mr. Tripler 
stirred the mixture with a 
glass rod. It boiled vio- 
lently for a few minutes 
and then the alcohol thick- 
ened up slowly until it 
looked like maple syrup; 




LIQUID AIR OVEIl FIRE. 

Liquid air is so cold that when placed over a hot gas-stove, frost not only 
coats the entire receptacle in which it is contained, but a thick plating of ice 
gathers on the bottom directly over the blaze. 



60 



THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




AN ICICLE OF FROZEN ALCOHOL. 

An alcohol thermometer is supposed to measure all degrees of cold, but liquid 
air freezes alcohol in a few seconds to a hard lump of ice. 



then it froze solid, and Mr. Tripler held 
it up in a long steaming icicle. Mercury 
is frozen in liquid air until it is as hard as 
granite. Mr. Tripler made a little pasteboard 
box the shape of a hammer-head, filled it with 
mercury, suspended a rod in it for a handle, 
and then |)laced it in a pan of liquid air. In a 
few minutes the mercury was frozen so solid 




HANGING FROM A BLOCK OV FKOZEN MEIICTJKY. 



The mercu. 
edcli. end. The 
is f[i(ichl!i fro- 
trill siij>j)orf s( 



y is poured 

mold IS tltei, 



into n paper mold having a screw-eye inserted in 
placed in a, basin ofliiinid air, inhere the mercury 
ispciidcd in the man ner shown, the mercury block 
d lion nils for half an hour. 



LIQUID AIR. 



63 



that it could be used for driving nails into a 
hard-wood block. What would the scientists 
of twenty-five years ago have said if any one 
had predicted the use of a mercury hammer for 
driving nails ? 

Liquid air freezes other metals just as thor- 
oughly as it freezes mercury. Iron and steel 
become as brittle as glass. A tin cup which 




DRIVING A NAIL WITH A HAMMER MADE OF MERCURY 
FROZEN BY LIQUID AIR. 

has been filled with liquid air for a few min- 
utes will, if dropped, shatter into a hundred 
little fragments like thin glass. Copper, gold, 
and all precious metals, on the other hand, are 
made more pliable, so that even a thick piece 
can be bent readily between the fingers. 

JN'ot long ago Mr. Tripler took a can of liquid 
air to the Harlem River, and poured it out on 



64 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS, 




LIQUID AIR IN WATER. 

Liquid air is slightly lighter than water. 
When a small quantity of it is poured into a 
tall flask of water, it floats for a f etc seconds ; 
and then the nitrogen boils away, leaving the 
liquid oxygen, which, being slightly heavier 
than ivater, sinks in big silvery bubbles. 



in a tall jar of water, part 
gen, which is lighter than 
rate first, then the liquid 



the water in order 
to see its effect. 
Small masses of it 
at once collected 
in little round 
balls on the sur- 
face of the river, 
and being so much 
colder than the 
water, they froze 
small cups or 
boats of ice, in 
which they began 
floating about 
swiftly, bumping 
up against one 
another like so 
many lively water 
bugs, finally boil- 
ing away and 
disappearing, 
leaving the min- 
iature ice boats 
quite still. If a 
small quantity of 
liquid air is placed 
of the liquid nitro- 
water, will evapo- 
oxygen, which is 



LIQUID AIR. 65 

slightly heavier than the water, will sink in 
beautiful silvery bubbles. 

I saw an eg^ frozen in liquid air. It came 
out so hard, that it took a sharp blow of the 
hammer to crack it, and the inside of it had 
the peculiar crystalline appearance of quartz — 
a kind of mineral egg. At one time in Bos- 
ton, Mr. Tripler had some of his liquid air with 
him at a hotel, where he was explaining its 
wonders to a party of friends. The waiter 
served a fine beefsteak for dinner, and Mr. 
Tripler promptly dipped it into the liquid air 
and then returned it with some show of indig- 
nation to the chef. It was as hard as rock 
crystal and when dropped on the floor it shiv- 
ered into a thousand pieces. 

"The time is certainly coming," says Mr. 
Tripler, "when every great packing house, 
every market, every hospital, every hotel, and 
many private houses will have plants for mak- 
ing liquid air. The machinery is not expensive, 
it can be set up in a tenth part of the space 
occupied by an ammonia ice machine, and its 
product can be easily handled and placed 
where it is most needed. Ten years from now 
hotel guests will call for cool rooms in summer 
with as much certainty of getting them as they 
now call for ^varm rooms in Avinter. 

"And think of what unspeakable value the 
5 



66 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

liquid air will be in hospitals. In the first 
place, it is absolutely pure air; in the second 
place the proportion of oxygen is ver}^ large, 
so that it is vitalizing air. Why, it will not be 
necessary for the tired-out man of the future 
to make his usual summer trip to the moun- 
tains. He can have his ozone and his cool 
heights served to him in his room.. Cold is 
always a disinfectant ; some disease germs, like 
yellow fever, it kills outright. Think of the 
value of a ' cold ward ' in a hospital, where the 
air could be kept absolutely fresh, and where 
nurses and friends could visit the patient with- 
out fear of infection ! " 

The property of liquid oxygen to promote 
rapid combustion will make it invaluable, Mr. 
Tripler thinks, for use as an explosive. A bit 
of oily waste, soaked in liquid air, was placed 
inside of a small iron tube, open at both ends. 
This was laid inside of a larger and stronger 
pipe, also open at both ends. When the waste 
was ignited by a fuse, the explosion was so 
terrific that it not only blew the smaller tube 
to pieces, but it burst a great hole in the outer 
tube. Mr. Tripler thinks that by the proper 
mixture of liquid air with cotton, wool, glycer- 
ine, or any other liydrocarbon, an explosive of 
enormous power could l)e produced. And un- 
like dynamite or nitro-glycerine, it could be 



LIQUID AIR. 



67 



handled like so much 
sand, there being not 
the slightest danger 
of explosion from 
concussion, al- 
though, of course, 
it would have to be 
kept away from fire. 
It will take many 
careful experiments 
to ascertain the best 
method for making 
this new explosive, 
but think of the 
reward for its suc- 
cessful application ! 
The expense of 
heavy ammunition 
and its difficult 
transportation and 
storage would be en- 
tirely done away with. JSIo more would Avar- 
ships be loaded down with cumbersome explo- 
sives, and no more could there be terrible 
powder explosions on shipboard, because the 
ammunition could be made for the guns as it 
was needed, a plant on shipboard furnishing 
the necessary liquid air. 

Liquid air, owing to the large amount of 




IRON AND COPPER TUBES BURST 
BY EXPLOSION OP LIQUID AIR 
WITH OILY WASTE. 



THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




BUKNING STEEL IN AN ICE TUMBLER PARTLY FILLED 
WITH LIQUID AIR. 

A point of interest in this experiment is the contrasts in temperatures ; 
steel is burning at 3,500° F. in an ice receptacle containing liquid air at 312"' 
below zero. 

oxygen which it contains, will make steel burn 
violently. Mr. Tripler places a little of it in a 
tumbler made of ice, and then thrusts into it a 



LIQUID AIR. 09 

steel spring having at the end a, lighted match. 
The moment the steel strikes the lic^uid air it 
burns like a splinter of fat pine. This experi- 
ment shows a most astonishing range of tem- 
perature. Here is steel burning at 3,500 de- 
grees above zero in an ice receptacle containing 
liquid air at 312 degrees below zero. 

But all other uses of liquid air fade into in- 
significance when compared Avith the possi- 
bility of its utilization as power for running 
machinery, which is Mr. Tripler's chief object. 
I saw Mr. Tripler admit a quart or more of the 
liquid air into a small engine. A few seconds 
later the piston began to pump vigorously, 
driving the fly-wheel as if under a heavy head 
of steam. The liquid air had not been forced 
into the engine under pressure, and there was 
no perceptible heat under the boiler ; indeed, 
the tube Avhich passed for a boiler was soon 
shaggy with white frost. Yet the little engine 
stood there in the middle of the room, running 
apparently without motive power, making no 
noise and giving out no heat and no smoke, 
and producing no ashes. And that is some- 
thing that can be seen nowhere else in the 
world. 

''If I can make little engines run by this 
power, why not big ones ? ' ' asks Mr. Tripler. 

'' And run them ^tirely with air? " 



70 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

'' Yes, with liquid air in place of the water 
now used in steam boilers, and the ordinary 
heat of the air instead of the coal under the 
boilers. Air is the cheapest material in the 
world, but Ave have only begun learning how 
to use it. We know a little about compressed 
and liquid air, but almost nothing about utiliz- 
ing the heat of the air. Coal is only the sun's 
energy stored up. What I do is to use the 
sun's energy direct. 

'^It is really one of the simplest things in 
the world," Mr. Tripler continued, 'Svhen 
you understand it. In the case of a steam- 
engine you have water and coal. You must 
take heat enough out of the coal, and put it 
into the water to change the water into a gas 
— that is, steam. The expansion of this gas 
produces power. And the water will not give 
off any steam until it has reached the boiling 
point of 212 degrees Fahrenheit. 

' ' ISTow steam bears the same relation to 
water that air does to liquid air. Air is a 
liquid at 312 degrees below zero — a degree of 
cold that we can hardly imagine. If you raise 
it above 312 degrees below zero it boils, just 
as water boils above 212 degrees, l^ow, then, 
we live at a temperature averaging, say, sev- 
enty degrees above zero — about the present 
temperature of this room. In other words, 



LIQUID AIR. 73 

we are 382 degrees warmer than liquid air. 
Therefore, compared with the cokl of liquid air 
we are living in a furnace. A race of people 
who could live at 312 degrees below zero would 
shrivel up as quickly in this room as we would 
if we were shut up in a baking oven. Now 
then, you have liquid air — a liquid at 312 de- 
grees below zero. You expose it to the heat 
of this furnace in which we live, and it boils 
instantly and throws off a vapor which ex- 
pands and produces power. That's simple, 
isn't it ?" 

It did seem simple; and you remember with 
admiration that Mr. Tripler is the first man 
who ever ran an engine with liquid air, as he 
was also the first to invent a machine for mak- 
ing liquid air in quantities, a machine which 
has since been patented. 

In some respects liquid air possesses a vast 
supremacy over steam. In the first place, it 
has about one hundred times the expansive 
power of steam. In the second place, it begins 
to produce power the instant it is exposed to 
the atmosphere. In making steam, water has 
first to be raised to a temperature of 212 de- 
grees Fahrenheit. That is, if the water as it 
enters the boiler has a temperature of 50 de- 
grees, 162 degrees of heat must be put into it 
before it will yield a single pound of pressure. 



74 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




CHARLES E. TRIPLER. 



After that, every additional degree of heat pro- 
duces one pound of pressure, whereas every 
degree of heat applied to liquid air gives about 
twenty pounds of pressure. 



LIQUID AIR. 75 

''Liquid air can be applied to any engine," 
says Mr. Tripler, "and used as easily and as 
safely as steam. You need no large boiler, no 
water, no coal, and you have no waste. The 
heat of the atmosphere, as I have said before, 
does all the work of expansion. ' ' 

The advantages of compactness, and the ease 
with which liquid air can be made to produce 
power by the hea,t of the atmosphere, at once 
suggested its use in all kinds of motor vehicles, 
and a firm in Philadelphia is now making ex- 
tensive experiments looking to its use. A sat- 
isfactory application may do away with the 
present huge, misshapen, machinery -laden au- 
tomobiles, and make possible small, light, and 
inexpensive motors. 

Mr. Tripler even predicts that by the agency 
of liquid air, practical aerial navigation can be 
assured. The problem which has hitherto de- 
feated the purposes of aerial navigators has 
been the difficulty of producing a propelling 
machine sufficiently light and yet strong 
enough to keep the propeller in motion. Liquid 
air requires no boilers, no fuel, no smoke- 
stacks, and the machinery necessary to its use 
will be a mere feather's weight compared with 
the ordinary steam engine. 

Much has yet to be done before liquid air 
becomes the revolutionizing power of which 



76 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

Mr. Tripler has j^rophesied. It has many dis- 
advantages as well as advantages, and it will 
undoubtedly take Mr. Tripler and other inven- 
tors many years to perfect the machines neces- 
sary for using it practically. It will probably 
be chiefly valuable in cases where a source of 
power must be produced at one place and used 
at another. This much, however, has been 
positively accomplished: A machine has been 
built which will make liquid air in large quan- 
tities at small expense, and an engine has been 
successfully run by liquid air. Other devel- 
opments will undoubtedly come later. 



CHAPTER III. 

TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 
JIoiv 2Iarconi Seiids Jlessages Through Space. 

Marconi was a mere boy when he first be- 
gan to dream of the marvellous possibility of 
sending telegraph messages without wires. 
He was barely twenty-one, a shy, modest, 
beardless youth, when he went up to London 
from his quiet country home in Italy to tell the 
world about one of the greatest inventions of 
the century. A few months later this boy 
had set up his apparatus and was telegraphing 
all sorts of messages through the air, through 
Avails, through houses and towns, through 
mountains, and even through the earth itself, 
and that with a mechanism hardly more com- 
plicated or expensive than a toy telephone. 
The present system of telegraphy by means of 
wires, the sending of long despatches over con- 
tinents and under oceans, is quite wonderful 
enough in itself, but here was an inventor who 
did away entirely with wires and all other 
means of mechanical connection, and sent his 



80 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

messages directly through space. It is for this 
that Marconi was famous the world over at 
twenty-five. 

The young inventor is described as being 
tall and slender, and dark of complexion. Al 
though he bears an Italian name and Avas born 
in Bologna, Italy (in 1874), and educated at 
Bologna, Leghorn, and Florence, he is only 
half Italian, his mother being an English 
woman. He speaks English readily and 
fluently, and he appears to like London better 
than his native land. His first experiments 
were carried on in the fields of his father's 
estate, and consisted merely of tin boxes set up 
on poles of varying heights, one of which was 
connected with a crude transmitting machine, 
and the other with an equally crude receiver, 
which he himself had manufactured. 

Before going into the details of Guglielmo, 
or William, Marconi's apparatus and telling 
more of his astonishing successes, it may be 
well to look somewhat into the theories on 
which he bases his work. It must be under- 
stood, however, that Marconi was not the first 
to suggest wireless telegraphy, nor to signal 
experimentally for short distances without 
wires ; but he was the first to perfect a system 
and to put it into practical operation, and to 
liim, therefore, belongs the laurels of the inven- 




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TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 83 

tion. Our own Prof. S. F. B. Morse, the in- 
ventor of telegraphy, experimented with wire- 
less signals, and so did Dr. Oliver Lodge and 
W. H. Preece of London, Thomas A. Edison, 
Mkola Tesla, Professor Trowbridge of Har- 
vard, and others. 

In sending messages through space, Marconi 
deals with that mysterious all-pervading sub- 
stance known as the ether. In the English 
language the word "ether" has two totally 
different meanings. It is the name of a clear, 
colorless liquid, which is used in surgical opera- 
tions for easing a patient of pain. Every one 
has heard of ' ' taking eth er. ' ' This liquid, 
however, has nothing to do with the present 
subject, and it should be entirely dismissed 
from the mind. The ether which carries 
Marconi's messages is a colorless, odorless, un- 
seen, inconceivabl}^ rarefied substance which is 
supposed to fill all space. Scientists know 
almost nothing as to its properties, but they do 
know that it will vibrate, and they have called 
these vibrations electricity, heat, and light. 

It seems strange enough that we should use 
the ether every time we build a fire under the 
tea-kettle, every time we read by the light of 
a gas-jet, every time we talk over the tele- 
phone, and yet know next to nothing about it. 

Throw a stone into a pond and you will pro- 



84 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

duce a series of small waves or ripples — in 
other words, water vibrations. Strike a bell 
and vibrations in the air bring the sound to 
your ear. In a similar way ether has its own 
peculiar vibrations. For instance, a star rail- 
lions of miles away starts the enormously 
rapid vibrations of light, and these vibrations 
finally reach our eyes, as the ripples in a pond 
reach the shore. We do not really see the 
star; we are merely conscious of light waves 
in the ether. In the same manner ethereal vi- 
brations bring us the heat and light of the 
sun, and the awful energy of the lightning 
stroke. Irom this Ave know that the ether 
extends everywhere through space, and that the 
SLin and the earth and the stars are set in it, 
like cherries in a jelly. Light will pass through 
such a hard, brittle substance as glass, heat 
will go through iron, and electricity " flows " 
in a copper wire. These facts show us that 
the ether must be inside of the glass and the 
iron and the copper, else the vibrations would 
not go through. In the same way the air is 
full of ether, and so are our bodies and every- 
thing else, for science laiows nothing which 
entirely resists the passage of heat, light, and 
electricity. We call some substances solids, 
owing to their hardness, but so far as the 
ether is concerned there is no sucli thing as a 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 87 

solid. Every atom, even of the hardest dia- 
mond, is afloat in ether. 

But if heat, light, and electricity are all 
caused by ether waves, how can we tell them 
apart ? 

The larger the stone you throw into tlie pond 
the larger the waves produced and the more 
rapidly they travel. In a similar way ether 
waves are of widely different lengths and ra- 
pidity or frequency. Yibrations of one speed 
give light, another speed give heat, and still 
another give electricity. Science has learned 
by a series of wonderful experiments that if the 
ether vibrates at the inconceivable swiftness of 
400 trillions of waves every second, we see the 
color red, if twice as fast we see violet. If 
more slowly, from 200 to 400 trillions to the 
second, we experience the sensation of heat. 
If more rapidly than violet, we have what 
science knows as "unseen light" — the actinic 
rays and, probably, X-rays. Our eyes will 
take in only seven colors with vibrations from 
400 to 800 trillions a second. If our eyes 
were better we might see other degrees of 
vibrations, such as X-rays and various elec- 
trical currents, and know new colors, stranger 
and more beautiful, perhaps, than any that we 
now see. 

Ether waves should not be confused with air 



88 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

waves. Sound is a result of the vibration of 
the air; if we had ether and no air we should 
still see and feel heat and electricity, but there 
would be nothing to hear. Air or sound 
waves are very slow compared with ether 
waves. A man's ordinary voice produces only 
about 130 waves a second, a woman's shrill 
scream will reach 2,000 vibrations— a mere 
nothing compared with the hundreds of tril- 
lions which represent light. ]^or do air waves 
travel as rapidly as ether waves. In a storm 
the ether brings the flash of the lightning long 
before the air brings the sound of thunder, as 
every one knows. 

IS^ow, to get down to electricity. Certain 
vibrations of the ether are recognized as elec- 
tricity — and there are many kinds of electrical 
waves to correspond with diiferent degrees of 
vibration. Inventors have been able to utilize 
electricity by producing these ether waves by 
artificial means. I have compared the ether 
to a jelly. The electrician merely jars this 
jelly, and the vibrations which we know as a 
" current " are produced. A current does not 
really pass through a telegraph wire — it does 
not flow like water in a pipe, — although our 
common language has no other means of ex- 
pressing its passage. In reality a vibration is 
started at one end of the wire, and it is the 




MAST AND STATION AT SOUTH FOKELAND, NEAR DOVER, 
ENGLAND, USED BY MARCONI IN TELEGRAPHING WITH- 
OUT WIRES ACROSS THE CHANNEL TO BOULOGNE, 
FRANCE. 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 



91 



wave that travels. Set up a row of toy 
blocks. Tip over the first one, and it will tip 
over the second, and so on to the end. The 
blocks stay Avhere they are, but the motion or 




THE GOODWIN SANDS LIGHTSHIP. 

Struck in a collision on April 28, 1899, the lightship used her Marconi 
apparatus (shown suspended by a spar from the masthead), and so got help 
from shore, twelve miles atcay. 



wave goes onward to the end. An electric 
wave is, of course, invisible. Imagine a cork 
on the surface of a pond at any distance from 
the place where a stone is dropped ; the cork. 



92 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

when the wave reaches it, will bob up and 
down. I^ow, though we cannot see the electric 
wave, we can devise an arrangement which 
indicates the presence of the wave exactly 
after the manner of a cork. 

Electric waves were discovered in 1842 by 
Joseph Henr}^, an American. He did not use 
the phrase '^ electric waves"; but he discov- 
ered that when he produced an electric spark 
an inch long in a room at the top of his house, 
electrical action was instantly set up in another 
wire circuit in his cellar. There was no visible 
means of communication between the two cir- 
cuits, and after studj^ing the matter he saw and 
announced that the electric spark set up some 
kind of an action in the ether, which passed 
through two floors and ceilings, each fourteen 
inches thick, and caused ^' induction " — set up 
what is called an induced current — in the wires 
in the cellar. This fact of induction is now 
one of the simplest and most commonplace phe- 
nomena in the work of electricians. Edison 
has already used it in telegraphing from a flying 
train. Hertz, the great German investigator, 
developed the study of these waves, and an- 
nounced that they penetrated wood and brick, 
but not metal. The ''Hertzian wave" is, in- 
deed, an important feature of wireless teleg- 
raphy. Strange to say, however, considering 




Marconi. 
WILLIAM MARCONI AND HIS ASSISTANT, A. E. BULLOCKS. 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 95 

the number of brilliant electricians in the world, 
and the great interest in electrical phenomena, 
it was left to the young Italian, Marconi, to 
frame the largest conception of what might be 
done with electric waves, and to invent instru- 
ments for doing it. 

Marconi's reasoning was exceedingly simple. 
The ether is everywhere ; it is in the air and 
in the mountains and in houses as well as in a 
copper wire. Electricity must, therefore, pass 
through the air and the mountain as well as 
through the wire. The difficulty lay in mak- 
ing an apparatus that would produce a pecu- 
liar kind of wave, and to catch or receive this 
wave in a second apparatus located at a distance 
from the first. This he finally succeeded in 
doing by the use of waves similar to those pro- 
duced by Hertz, which he excited in a specially 
constructed apparatus. These waves have a 
frequency of about 250 millions every second. 
From the generating apparatus this peculiar 
current is communicated to a wire which 
hangs from the top of a long pole or mast, or 
from a kite, and it passes by induction, through 
miles of air and earth and buildings, to a second 
hanging wire, which conveys it to a receiving 
instrument, where the signals are registered. 
To understand this transfer we must under- 
stand exactly what induction means. An elec- 



96 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

tricai current may be conducted through copper 
wire, water, iron, or any other good " conduc- 
tor." In induGtio7i VcLQ GxxYYent passes directly 
through the ether. When a current of elec- 
tricity passes through a wire, magnetism is 
present around that wire ; and if another wire 
be brought within the magnetic field of the 
charged wire and placed parallel with it, it will 
also become charged with electricity. That is 
induction, and it enables Marconi to send his 
messages across the Channel from England to 
France, from ships on the sea to shore, from 
light-house to light-house, and across wide 
stretches of open country. 

And now, having come to an understanding 
of the theory of sending messages without 
wires, we may take a look at Marconi's actual 
apparatus as it is now transmitting messages 
from the I^eedles in Alum Bay, at the extreme 
west end- of the Isle of Wi^^^ht, eio^hteen miles 
across the Channel, to Poole on the mainland 
of England. 

Erom the yqyj peak of Marconi's telegra])h 
mast at the ]N"eedles hangs a line of wire that 
runs through a window into the little sending- 
room. Here two matter-of-fact young men are 
at \\oy\s. as calmly as any ordinary telegraphers, 
talking througli the ether. One of them has 
his fingers on a black-handled key. He is say- 




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TELEGRAPIIING WITHOUT WIRES. 99 

ing something to the Poole station eighteen 
miles away in England. 

" Brripp — brripp — brripp — brrrrrr. 
Brripp — brripp — brripp — brrrrrr — 
Brripp — brrrrrr — brripp. Brripp — brripp ! " 

So speaks the sender with noise and deliber- 
ation. It is the Morse code working — ordinary 
dots and dashes which can be made into letters 
and words, as everybody knows. With each 
movement of the key bluish sparks jump an 
inch between the two brass knobs of the induc- 
tion coil, the same kind of coil and the same 
kind of sparks that are familiar in experiments 
with the Rontgen rays. For one dot, a single 
spark jumps; for one dash, there comes a 
stream of sparks. One knob of the induction 
coil is connected with the earth, the other 
with the wire hanging from the masthead. 
Each spark indicates a certain impulse from 
the electrical battery; each one of these im- 
pulses shoots through the wire, and from the 
wire through space by vibrations of the ether, 
travelling at the speed of light, or seven times 
around the earth in a second. That is all there 
is in the sending of these Marconi messages. 
Any person of fair intelligence could learn to 
do it, Morse code and all, in a few hours. 

After sending a message the young opera- 



100 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

tor switches on to the receiver, which is con- 
tained in a metal box about the size of a valise. 
The same perpendicular wire from the mast- 
head serves to receive messages as well as to 
send them, but the instruments within the 
ofRce for sending and for receiving are quite 
different. 

The receiving apparatus is kept in a lead 
box to protect it against the influence of the 
sending machine, which rests beside it on the 
table. You can easily believe that a receiver, 
sensitive enough to record impulses from a 
point eighteen miles away, might be disorgan- 
ized if these impulses came from a distance of 
two or three feet. But the lead box keeps 
out these nearby vibrations. 

The coherer is the part of the receiving ap- 
paratus which makes wireless telegraphy pos- 
sible, and to it more than to anything else has 
Marconi given his attention. He did not make 
the first coherer, but he made the first one 
that was practically useful, and to this great 
and important invention he owes his success. 

I will try to give a clear idea of what this 
coherer is like, and why it is so important. It 
consists of a tube made of glass, about the 
thickness of a thermometer tube, and about two 
inches long. It seems absurd that so tiny and 
sim])le an affair can come as a benefit to all 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 101 

mankind; yet the chief virtne of Marconi's in- 
vention lies here in this fragile coherer. But 
for this, induction coils would snap their mes- 
sages in vain, for none could read them. In 
each end of this tube there is a silver plug, the 
two plugs nearly meeting within the tube. In 
the narrow space between the plugs nestle 
several hundred minute fragments of nickel 
and silver, the finest dust, sif tings through 
silk, and these enjoy the strange property (as 
Marconi discovered) of being alternately very 
good conductors and very bad conductors for 
the Hertzian waves — very good conductors 
when welded together by the passing current 
into a continuous metal path, very bad con- 
ductors when they fall apart under a blow 
from the electrical tapper which is a part of 
the receiving apparatus. One end of the co- 
herer is connected with the wire which hangs 
from the mast outside, the other with the earth 
and also with a home battery that Avorks the 
tapper and the Morse printing instrument. 

And the practical operation is this: A single 
vibration comes through the ether, down the 
wire and into the coherer, cansing the particles 
of metal to stick together or cohere (hence the 
name). Then the Morse instrument prints a 
dot, and the tapper strikes its little hammer 
against the glass tube. That blow jars apart 



102 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

or decoheres the ])articles of metal, and sto]:)S 
the current of the home battery. And each 
successive impulse through the ether produces 
the same curious coherence and decoherence, 
and the same printing of dot or dash. The 
impulses through the ether would never be 
strong enough of themselves to work the print- 
ing instrument and the tapper, but they are 
strong enough to open and close a valve (the 
metal dust), which lets in or shuts out the 
stronger current of the home battery — all of 
which is simple enough after some one has 
taught the world how to do it. 

Mr. Cleveland Moffett, who has made a per- 
sonal study of wireless telegraphy with Mr. 
Marconi and his assistant, Dr. Erskine-Murray, 
says that even the curvature of the earth itself 
seems to make no difference in the transmittal 
of messages. 

' ' We have telegraphed twenty-five miles 
from a ship to the shore, ' ' Dr. Murray told 
Mr. Moffett, '^ and in that distance the earth's 
dip amounts to about 500 feet. If the curva- 
ture counted against us then, the messages 
would have passed some hundreds of feet over 
the receiving station ; but nothing of the sort 
happened. So Ave feel reasonably confident 
that these Hertzian waves follow around 
smoothly as the earth curves." 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 105 

' ' And you can send messages tlirongii hills, 
can you not, and in all kinds of weather? " 

' ' Easil}^ We have done so repeatedly. ' ' 

''Then if neither land nor sea nor atmos- 
pheric conditions can stop you, I don't see why 
you can't send messages to any distance." 

" So we can," said the electrician — " so we 
can, given a sufficient height of wire. It has 
become simply a question now how high a mast 
you are willing to erect. If you double the 
height of your mast, you can send a message 
four times as far. If you treble the height of 
your mast, you can send a message nine times 
as far, and so on up. To start with, you may 
assume that a wire suspended from an eighty- 
foot mast will send a message twenty miles. 
We are doing about that here. ' ' 

" Then a mast 160 feet high would send a 
message eighty miles? " 

"Exactly." 

" And a mast 320 feet high would send a 
message 320 miles; a mast 640 feet high 
would send a message 1,280 miles; and a mast 
1,280 feet high would send a message 5,120 
miles?" 

" That's right. So you see if there were 
another Eiffel Tower in New York, it would be 
possible to send messages to Paris through the 
ether and get answers without ocean cables." 



106 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

' ' Do you really think that would be possi- 
ble?" 

'' I see no reason to doubt it," answered Dr. 
Erskine-Murray. " What are a few thousand 
miles to this wonderful ether, which brings us 
our light every day from millions of miles 
away ? " 

One of the greatest of present difficulties is 
that of securing secrecy in the transmission of 
these ethereal messages. The vibrations from 
tlie perpendicular wires are transmitted equally 
well in every direction, exactly as circular 
waves are produced when a stone is thrown in 
the water. Therefore any one may set up a 
receiver anywhere within the range of the 
waves, and take the message. Thus, in times 
of war, communications between battleships 
or armies might be at the mercy of any one 
who' had a Marconi receiver, although, of 
course, generals and admirals might use ci- 
pher despatches. 

Marconi realizes the very great importance 
of sending messages in one and only one direc- 
tion. Light waves can be reflected by a mir- 
ror, and thrown upon one particular spot. 
Every boy who has played in school with a 
bit of looking-glass knows this fact well. 
J^ow, electricity, Avhich is also produced by 
vibrations in the ether, can also be reflected. 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 107 

Marconi has been experimenting with a copper 
reflector, by means of which he throws a pecu- 
liar kind of electrical wave directly through 
space to the distant receiver. In this way a 
message may be aimed in any direction by sim- 
ply turning the reflector a little, and no one 
but the man at the receiver can knoAV what is 
being sent. This exceedingly important fea- 
ture of the work is, however, still in an experi- 
mental stage, and the inventor who is success- 
ful in making a really practical reflecting 
apparatus will win a fortune. 

The practical nses of wireless telegraphy are 
man}^. In December, 1898, the English light- 
ship service authorized the establishment of 
wireless communication between the South 
Foreland lighthouse at Dover and the East 
Goodwin lightship, twelve miles distant. 
This was installed in the usual way without 
difficulty, and has been in operation ever since, 
the lightship keepers learning to use the instru- 
ments in a few days. And before the appa- 
ratus had been up six months several warnings 
of wrecks and vessels in distress reached shore, 
when, but for the Marconi signals, nothing of 
the danger would have been known. 

Another application of wireless telegraphy 
that promises to become important is the sig- 
nalling of incoming and outgoing vessels. 



108 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

With Marconi stations all along the coast, it 
would be possible for all vessels within twenty- 
five miles of shore to make their ])resence 
known and to send or receive communications. 

So apparent are the advantages of such a 
system that in May, 1898, Lloyds began nego- 
tiations with the Wireless Telegraph Company 
for setting up instruments at various Lloyds 
stations ; and a preliminary trial was made 
between Bally- castle and Rathlin Island in the 
north of Ireland. The distance signalled was 
seven and a half miles, with a high cliff inter- 
vening between the two positions, and the 
results of many trials were absolutely satis- 
factory. 

We come now to that historic week in 
March, 1899, when the S3^stem of wireless tel- 
egraphy was put to its most severe test in ex- 
periments across the English Channel between 
Dover and Boulogne. These were undertaken 
by request of the French Government, which 
was considering a purchase of the rights to 
the invention in France. At five o'clock on 
the afternoon of Monday, March 27th, every- 
thing being ready, Marconi pressed the sound- 
ing-key for the first cross-channel message. 
The transmitter sounded, the sparks flashed, 
and a dozen eyes looked out anxiously upon 
the sea. Would the message carry all the way 




THE MAST AND STATION AT BOUOLGNE, FRANCE, USED BY MAKCONI IN TELE- 
GRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES ACROSS THE CHANNEL. 



Drawn from a photograph. 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. Ill 

to England ? Thirty -two miles seemed a long 
way ! 

Marconi transmitted deliberately a short 
message, telling the Englishmen that he was 
using a two-centimetre spark, and signing 
three Y's at the end. Then he stopped, and 
the room was silent with a straining of ears 
for some sound from the receiver. A moment's 
pause, and then it came briskly, and the tape 
rolled off its message. There it was, short and 
commonplace enough, yet vastly important, 
since it was the first Avireless message sent 
from England to the Continent: First "Y," 
the call; then ''M," meaning "Your message 
is perfect " ; then, ^' Same here, 2 c m s. Y Y 
Y. , " the last being an abbreviation for two cen- 
timetres and the conventional finishing signal. 

And so the thing was done; a marvellous 
new invention was come into the world to 
stay. 

On the following Wednesday Marconi did a 
graceful thing by sending a complimentary 
message to M. Branl}^ (in Paris), the inventor 
of the original coherer, which Marconi had im- 
proved upon. He also sent a long message to 
the Queen of Italy. 

Mr. Moffett asked one of Marconi's chief 
engineers if there was not a great saving by 
the wireless system over cables. 



112 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

"Judge for yourself," was the answer. 
' ' Every mile of deep-sea cable costs about 
$Y50; every mile for the land-ends about 
$1,000. We save all that, also the great ex- 
pense of keeping a cable steamer constantly in 
commission making repairs and laying new 
lengths. All we need is a couple of masts and 
a little wire. The wear and tear is practically 
nothing. The cost of running is simply the 
cost of home batteries and operators' keep." 

' ' How fast can you transmit messages ? ' ' 

' ' Just now at the rate of about fifteen 
words a minute; but we shall do better than 
that, no doubt, with experience." 

''Do you think there is much field for the 
Marconi system in overland transmission? " 

" In certain cases, yes. For instance, where 
you can't get the right of way to put up wires 
and poles. What is a disobliging farmer 
going to do if you send messages right through 
his farm, barns and all? He can't sue the 
Hertzian waves for trespass, can he? Then 
see the advantage, in time of war, for quick 
communication, and no chance that the enemy 
may cut your wires." 

" But they may read your messages." 

" That is not so sure, for besides the possi- 
bility of directing the waves with reflectors, 
Marconi is now engaged in most promising ex- 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 113 

periments in syntony, which I may describe as 
the electrical tuning of a particular transmitter 
to a particular receiver, so that the latter will 
respond to the former and no other, while the 
former will influence the latter and no other. 
That, of course, is a possibility in the future, 
but it may soon be realized. There are even 
some who maintain that there may be produced 
as many separate sets of transmitters and re- 
ceivers capable of working together as there 
are separate sets of Yale locks and keys. 
In that event, any two private individuals 
might communicate freely without fear of be- 
ing understood by others. There are possibili- 
ties here, granting a limitless number of dis- 
tinct tunings for transmitter and receiver, that 
threaten our whole telephone system — I may 
add, our whole newspaper system." 

" Our newspaper system ? " 

''Certainly, the news might be ticked off 
tapes every hour right into the houses of all 
subscribers who had receiving instruments 
tuned to a certain transmitter at the news-dis- 
tributing station. Then the subscribers would 
have merely to glance over their tapes, and 
they would learn what was happening in the 
world." 

' ' Will the wireless company sell its instru- 
ments ? " 



114 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

'^ 1^0, it will rent them on a royalty, as tele- 
phone companies do, except, of course, where 
rights for a whole country are absolutely dis- 
posed of." 

There was further talk of the possibilities in 
wireless telegraphy, and of the services Mar- 
coni's invention may render in coming wars. 

'' If you care to stray a little into the realm of 
speculation," said the engineer, '^I will point 
out a rather sensational role that our instru- 
ments might play in military strategy. Sup- 
pose, for instance, you Americans were at war 
with Spain, and wished to keep close guard 
over Havana harbor without sending your fleet 
there. The thing might be done with a single 
fast cruiser in this way : Supposing a telegraphic 
cable laid from Key West, and ending at the 
bottom of the sea a few miles out from the 
harbor. And supposing a Marconi receiving 
instrument, properly protected, to be lying 
there at the bottom in connection with the 
cable. Now, it is plain that this receiver will 
be influenced in the usual way by a Marconi 
transmitter aboard the cruiser, for the Hert- 
zian waves pass well enough through water. 
With this arrangement, the captain of your 
cruiser may now converse freely with the ad- 
miral of the fleet at Key West or with the 
President himself at Washington, without so 



TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES. 117 

much as quitting Lis deck. He may report 
every movement of the Spanish warships as 
they take place, even while he is following 
them or being pursued by them. So long as 
he keeps within twenty or thirty miles of the 
submerged cable-end, he may continue his com- 
munications, may tell of arrivals and depart- 
ures, of sorties, of loading transports, of filling 
bunkers with coal, and a hundred other details 
of practical warfare. In short, this captain 
and his innocent-looking cruiser may become a 
never-closing eye for the distant American 
fleet. And it needs but little thought to see 
how easily an enemy at such disadvantage may 
be taken unawares or be led into betraying im- 
portant plans." 

And here, I think, we may leave this fasci- 
nating subject, in the hope that we have seen 
clearly what already is, and Avith a half dis- 
cernment of what is yet to be. 




JENATZY AND HIS "NEVER CONTENT," MAKING SIXTY-SIX MILES 
AN IIOUE. 
From instantaneous plLotographs appearing in " The Autocar.'" 



m: 




CHAPTER lY. 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 



Sixty -six Jliles an Hour on an Ordinary Road. 

Step np and take your seat in the world's 
very newest and most marvellous vehicle — the 
motor carriage. As you sit facing forward, 
where the horse ought to be and isn't, your 
right hand fits easily and naturally over the 
smooth handle of a lever. Press your thumb 
down hard on a little button at the top and a 
bell rings sharply — a mere friendly warning 
that you are about to start. Now push the lever 
forward one notch and off you go, smoothly 
and steadily, but slowly; another notch, and 
you are making the speed of a trotting horse ; 
still another notch, and you are flying like 
the wind, far faster than any horse ever goes 



122 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




A FRENCH TOURING CART, DRIVEN BY GASOLENE. 



under harness. While your right hand is thus 
employed with the speeding lever, your left is 
firmly holding the steering handle, swinging 
the vehicle, this way and that, around corners 
and past obstacles as easily as if it were a bicy- 
cle. If you wish to stop suddenly, your foot is 
on a brake ; a slight push and the vehicle comes 
to a standstill. 

Variations there are in the arrangement of 
levers and brakes in different vehicles, but 




A MOTOR TALLY-HO, PROPELLED BY STORED ELECTRICITY. 



THE MODERN 310 TOR VEHICLE. 



125 




A TYPICAL AMERICAN ELECTRIC CARRIAGE. 



they are all equally simple of management. 
Yon can travel from daylight to dark and never 
suffer with a worn-out horse ; you can run away 
from the dust and escape the flies, and if you 
reach a railroad crossing just as a train is pass- 
ing, your motor carriage never takes fright and 
runs away. When you reach home there is no 
troublesome unharnessing, nor rubbing-down, 
and your carriage is ready at a second's notice 
to start on a new expedition. And as for the 
carriage-whip, it will follow the horse out of 
existence. 



126 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




A LIGHT RUNABOUT, DRIVEN BY GASOLENE. 



Only a few years ago, in 1894, there were 
not thirty of these remarkable vehicles in prac- 
tical use in all the world. At the beginning 
of 1898 there were not thirt}^ in all America. 
And yet so great was the success of the inven- 
tor, and so widespread the interest of the pub- 
lic, that the manufacture of motor vehicles sud- 
denly became a great industry. In the first 
four months of the year 1899 alone, corporations 
with the enormous aggregate capitalization of 
more than $300,000,000 were organized in New 
York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia; and 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 



127 




THE SERPOLLET STEAM CAB. 

in many cities of the East motor vehicles have 
become so familiar on the streets that they are 




MORRIS & SALVIN'S " ELECTROBAT. 
From, a photograph by Copelin, Chicago. 



128 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

noticed hardly more than horse carriages. More 
than that, motor ambulances, motor trucks, 
motor gun-carriages, motor stages, and motor 
fire-engines are in operation in various cities. 




A DAIMLER PETROLEUM-ENGINE CARRIAGE. 



In France and England the motor vehicle has 
become an established and powerful factor in 
the common affairs of life. France has a power- 
ful motor vehicle or ' ' automobile ' ' club which 
gives frequent races and exhibitions. At a sin- 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 



129 



- ■ ^. -^ :- 




'A'm^' 




1 








S^ 


h 


«^ji» 


«i^i»:^'9HHL 







THE' SERPOLLET STEAM CARRIAGE. 

ffle ffatherino^ more than 1,500 vehicles were 
shown, representing every conceivable model, 



jfe- 



r-r-^ 






DCRYEA MOTOR WAGON, WINNER OF THE CHICAGO 
"times-herald" race, NOVEMBER 28, 1895. 
Fro)n a photograph, hrj permission o/" The Ilbtseless Age." 

9 



130 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

from milk-wagons to fashionable broughams 
and the huge brakes of De Dion and Bouton, 
which carry almost as many passengers as a 
railroad car. Some of the exjDert ' ^ drivers ' ' 
of Paris have ridden thousands of iniles in their 
road wagons, have climbed mountains, and 
raced through half of Europe, meeting new 
accidents, facing new adventures, and using 
strange new devices for which names have yet 
to be coined. 

The motor races of Paris have been by far 
the most unique and remarkable that the world 
has ever seen. Both M. Rene de Knyif and 
Count Chasseloup-Laubat, of Paris, have made 
60 miles an hour on an ordinary road track. 
Just think of it ! Faster than the Empire State 
Express, and that with no advantage of steel 
rails nor level road-bed. But even the records 
of these two famous racers have been beaten 
by M. Jenatzy with his lightning carriage, ^' La 
Jamais Contente " (''The I^ever Content"). 
This wonderful vehicle is built of sheet iron in 
the form of a long cigar or torpedo, so that 
it plunges through the air like a dart. The 
wheels are very small and, of course, fitted 
with rubber tires. There is a manhole in the 
top of the vehicle, where the driver sits. Just 
in front of it there is a little steering wheel and 
electrical meters to show the voltage and am- 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 



IBl 




AN ELECTRIC HANSOM CAB. 



pereage of the current. To see ^'La Jamais 
Contente ' ' one ayouM think that no driver ever 
would dare to risk his life upon it. And, in- 
deed, after the current is turned on and the 
wheels begin to revolve, it is either fly or burn, 
so tremendous is the power of the batteries. 
At the famous record trial " La Jamais Con- 



^32 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

tente ' ' was towed out from Paris to the racing 
road by a humble petroleum car. M. Rene 
de Knyff gave the word to start. M. Jenatzy 
turned on the current and braced himself, lean- 
ing well forward, with his hands firmly clasping 
the steering wheel. The car moved off some- 
what slowly at first, but after going about 10 
yards, literally bounded forward, the wheels 
for a moment almost leaving the track. There 
was a blue-gra}^ streak down the road, a faint 
cloud of dust, and the famous carriage was 
making more than a mile a minute. The sound 
of the motor was described by a spectator as 
resembling the rustling of wings, and the car 
undulated like a swallow in flying, this no 
doubt being due to the action of the springs 
and the rubber tires. Nothing had ever before 
travelled on a common road at such a speed, 
and the spectators were anxious to know, not 
whether Jenatzy liad broken the record, but by 
how much he had broken it. The wheels left 
two broad white tracks in the middle of the 
road, absolutely straight and converging in the 
distance like a line of rails. It was a remark- 
able exhibition of accurate steering. Indeed, 
if Jenatzy had swerved an inch to the right or 
to the left, he would not have survived to tell 
the tale. After the trial was over it was found 
that ^' La Jamais Contente " had made Q>Q miles 



^^^^^^^^1 




.^■. .^! 


i| i 






-'^^H^^^^H^^H 


^^EF^ 


1 




M 


^^^^^^^Kb2^'^ 






1 M 



" o 

i25 M 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 135 

an hour, and M. Jenatzy went away declaring 
that he should soon make Y5 miles an hour. 

In general it may be said that France has 
led in. gasolene vehicles, and England in steam 
vehicles, while America, as was to be expected, 
has been far in the lead in electrical convey- 
ances of all kinds. Belgium and Germany, and 
to some extent Austria, have also been experi- 
menting with more or less success, but no such 
progress has been made in these countries as 
in France. It was not until 1898 that Spain 
rubbed its eyes for the first time at the sight 
of a motor vehicle, which rolled through Mad- 
rid with half a dozen little policemen careering 
after it. 

In a general way, it may be said that the 
best modern motor vehicle, whatever its pro- 
pelling power, is practically noiseless and odor- 
less and nearly free from vibrations. It is still 
heavy and clumsy in appearance, although it 
is lighter than the present means of convey- 
ance when the weight of the horse or horses is 
counted in with the carriage. And invention 
will soon lighten it still further. It cannot 
possibly explode. It will climb all ordinary 
hills, and on a level road it will give all speeds 
from two miles an hour up to twenty or more. 
Its mechanism has been made so simple that any 
one can learn to manage it in an hour or two. 



136 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS, 

And yet it is mechanism ; and intelligence, cool- 
ness, and caution are required to manage a mo- 
tor vehicle in a crowded street. The operator 
must combine the intelligence of the driver with 
that of the horse, and he does not appreciate 
the almost human sagacity of that despised ani- 
mal until he has tried to steer a motor vehicle 
down Fifth Avenue on a sunny afternoon. 

Seven different motive powers are now ac- 
tually employed in this country: electricity, 
gasolene, steam, compressed air, carbonic-acid 
gas, alcohol, and liquid air. The first three of 
these have been practically applied with great 
success; all the others are more or less in the 
experimental stage. 

The electric vehicle, which has had its most 
successful development in this country, has its 
well-defined advantages and disadvantages. It 
is simpler in construction and more easily man- 
aged than any other vehicle : one manufacturer 
calls it ''fool proof." It is wholly without 
odor or vibrations and practically noiseless. It 
will make any permissible rate of speed, and 
climb any ordinary hill. On the other hand, it 
is immensely heavy, owing to the use of stor- 
age batteries ; it can rnn only a limited distance 
without recharging, and it requires a moder- 
ately smooth road. In cost it is the most ex- 
pensive of all vehicles. And yet for city use, 




A DAIMLER MOTOK CARRIAGE NEAR FIFTH AVENUE AND FIFTY-EIGHTH 
STREET, NEW YORK. 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 139 

where a constant supply of electricity can be 
had, electrical cabs, carriages, and delivery 
wagons have demonstrated their remarkable 
practicability. 

The vital feature of the electric vehicle is 
the storage battery, which weighs from 500 to 
1,500 pounds, the entire weight of the vehicles 
varying from about 900 to 4,000 pounds. A 
phaeton for ordinary private use will weigh 
upwards of a ton, with a battery of 900 
pounds. This immense weight requires ex- 
ceedingly rigid construction and high-grade, 
expensive tires. The electrical current is easily 
controlled by means of a lever under the hand 
of the driver, the propelling machinery being 
comparatively simple. When the battery is 
nearly empty, it may be recharged at any elec- 
tric-lighting station by the insertion of a plug, 
the time required varying from two to three 
hours. Or, if the owner prefers, he can own 
his own charging plant and generate his own 
electricity: it will cost him from $500 to $Y00.^ 
The current not only operates the vehicle, but 
it lights the lamps, rings the gong, and in cabs 
and broughams actuates a push-button arrange- 
ment for communication between passenger and 
driver. The limit of travel without recharging 
is from 20 to 30 miles. A good electric car- 
riage for family use cannot be obtained for 



140 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

much less than $2,000, although one or two 
manufacturers advertise runabouts and buggies 
at from $Y50 to $1,500. An omnibus costs 
from $3,000 to $4,000. 

The company which operates the electric 
cab system in New York has a most exten- 
sive charging plant. Two batteries are pro- 
vided for each vehicle, so that, when one is 
empty, it may be removed by the huge fin- 
gers of a travelling crane, placed on a long 
table, and recharged at leisure, while a com- 
pletely filled battery is introduced in its place. 
This change takes only a few minutes, and 
the cab can be used continuously day and 
night. 

The '^lightning cabby" is a product of the 
new industry. He Avears a blue uniform some- 
what resembling that of a fireman, and he is a 
cool-headed, intelligent fellow, who can make 
10 miles an hour in a crowded street without 
once catching the suspicious eye of a police- 
*man. Most of the " cabbies " have had previ- 
ous experience as drivers, but they are given a 
very thorough training before they are allowed 
to venture on the streets with a vehicle of their 
own. A special instructor's cab is in use by 
the company. It has a flaring front platform 
with a solid wooden bumper, so that it may 
crash into a stone curb or run down a lamp- 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 143 

post without injury. The new man perches 
himself on the seat behind, and the instructor 
takes his place inside, where he is provided with 
a special arrangement for cutting off the cur- 
rent or applying the brakes, should the vehicle 
escape from the control of the learner. It 
usually takes a week to train a new ]iian so that 
he can manage all the brakes and levers with 
perfect presence of mind. Both of his hands 
and both of his feet are fully employed. With 
his left hand he manages the power lever, push- 
ing it forward one notch at a time to increase 
the speed. With his right hand he controls 
the steering lever, which, by the way, turns 
the' rear wheels and not the front ones, as is 
done with horse-propelled vehicles. His left 
heel is on the emergency switch, and his left 
toe rings the gong. With his right heel he 
turns the reversing switch, and he may apply 
the brake with either his right or his left foot. 
When he wishes to turn on the lights, he 
presses a button, under the edge of the seat. 
Hence, he is very fully employed, both men- 
tally and physically. He can't go to sleep and 
let the old horse carry him home. 

In France the system of instruction for 
drivers or chauffeurs (stokers), as they are 
called, is much more complicated and exten- 
sive, but hardly more thorough. There the 



144 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

cab company has prepared a YOO-yard course 
up hill and down, and paved it alternately with 
cobbles, asphalt, wooden blocks, and macadam, 
so as to give the incipient " cabby " experience 
in every difficulty which he will meet in the 
streets of Paris. Upon the inclines are placed 
numerous lay figures, made of iron — a typical 
Parisian nurse-maid with a bassinet, a bicycle 
rider ; an old gentleman, presumably deaf, who 
is not spry in getting out of the way; a dog or 
two, and paper bricks galore. Down through 
this throng must the motorman thread his way 
and clang his gong, and he is not considered 
proficient until he can course the full length of 
the " Eue de Magdebourg, " as the cabbies call 
it, without so much as overturning a single 
pastry cook's boy or crushing a dummy brick. 
IsTew York cabs will run 20 miles without re- 
charging. But it is not at all infrequent for a 
new man to have his vehicle stop suddenly and 
most unexpectedly; the current deserts him 
before he knows it. He must let the central 
office know at once, and the ambulance cab 
comes spinning out, hooks to the helpless ve- 
hicle, and drags it into the charging station. 
The company expects soon to have ten charg- 
ing stations in operation in various parts of the 
city, so that a cab will never have far to go for 
a new charge of electricity. Indeed, all the 




THE TRAINING COUUSE FOR AUTOMOBILE DRIVERS AT AUBERVILLIERS, 

NEAR PARIS. 

The course, besides being obstructed bij the dummy figures shown in the i>iclure, is strewn icith jjuper 
bricks, and thus becomes as severe a test asjjossible of the skill of the motorman. 



, THE MODERN 310 TOR VEHICLE. 147 

manufacturers of electrical vehicles s])eak with 
confidence of the day when the whole of the 
United States will be as thoroughly sprinkled 
with electric charging stations as it is to-day 
with bicycle road-houses. One manufacturer 
has issued lists of hundreds of central stations 
throughout JS^ew England, New York, and 
other Eastern States where automobiles may 
be provided with power. 

It is not hard to imagine what a country 
touring station will be like on a sunny summer 
afternoon some five or ten years hence. Long 
rows of vehicles will stand backed up comfort- 
ably to the charging bars, each with its elec- 
tric plug filling the battery with power. The 
owners will be lolling at the tables on the ve- 
randas of the nearby road-house. Men with re- 
pair kits Avill bustle about tightening up a nut 
here, oiling this bearing, and regulating that 
gear. From a long rubber tube compressed air 
will be hissing into pneumatic tires. There 
will also be many gasolene carts and road 
wagons and tricycles, and they, too, will need 
repairs and pumping, and their owners will em- 
ploy themselves busily in filling their little tin 
cans with gasolene, recharging their tanks, re- 
filling the water-jackets, and looking to the 
working of their sparking devices. And then 
there will be boys selling peanuts, arnica, and 



148 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

court-plasters, and undoubtedly a cynical old 
farmer or two with a pair of ambling- mares to 
carry home such of these new-fangled vehicles 
as may become hopelessly indisposed. Add to 
this bustling assembly of amateur '' self -propel- 
lers " a host of bicycle riders — for there will 
doubtless be as many bicycles in those days as 
ever— and it will be a sight to awaken every 
serious-minded horse to an uneasy considera- 
tion of his future. 

JSTor is this dream so far from being a picture 
of actual conditions. In Belgium a company 
has recently been formed to establish electric 
posting stations. Its promoters plan to have a 
bar and restaurant connected with the charg- 
ing plant, a regular medical attendant, and an 
expert mechanic who will know how to remedy 
all the ills of motor vehicles. In the larger 
cities the time must soon come when there will 
be coin-in-the-slot "hydrants" for electricity 
at many public places, from which owners of 
vehicles may charge their batteries while they 
wait. 

A number of prominent New York physicians 
own their own motor vehicles, these being espe- 
cially adapted to the varied necessities of a phy- 
sician's practice. A motor vehicle is alwa3^s 
ready at a moment's notice — it does not have 
to be harnessed. It can work twenty-four 







1^ 
1 »> 

?! 
« . 



f^ -2 



-II 

K ^ 5 

i 3 8 

ill 






.2 1 1 

s s 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 151 

hours Ji day. When it is left in the street out- 
side, the doctor takes with him a little brass 
plug, or key, without which the vehicle cannot 
run away or be moved or stolen. And, more- 
over, it is swifter by half than the ordinary 
means of locomotion, so that in emergency 
cases it may mean the saving of a life. One 
New York physician recently put an electric 
cab to a most extraordinary use. His patient 
had a broken arm, and he wished to photograph 
the fracture with Eontgen rays, but there was 
no source of electricity available in the resi- 
dence of the patient. So he made a connection 
with the battery in his cab, which stood at the 
door; the rays were promptly applied, and the 
injury was located. 

While the electric vehicle has been winning 
plaudits for its work in the cities, where pave- 
ments are smooth and hard, the gasolene vehicle 
has been equally successful both in the city and 
in the country. For ordinary use the gasolene- 
propelled vehicle has many important advan- 
tages. It is much lighter than the electric 
vehicle; it requires no charging station, gaso- 
lene being obtainable at every cross-roads store ; 
and it is moderately cheap. All of the famous 
long-distance races and rides in Europe have 
been made in gasolene vehicles. On the other 
hand, most of the gasolene vehicles are subject 



15^ "THE BOY'S BOOK 0"F mVENTlOMS. 

to slight vibrations due to the motor, and it 
is ahnost impossible to do away entirely with 
the unpleasant odors of burnt gases. Gasolene 
vehicles are never self- starting, it being neces- 
sary to give the piston one turn by hand. In 
general, also, they are not as simple of man- 
agement as the electric vehicle ; there is more 
machinery to. understand and to operate, and 
more care is necessary to keep it in order. But 
when once the details are mastered, the travel- 
ler can go almost anywhere on earth with his 
gasolene carriage : up hill and down, over the 
roughest roads, through mud and snow, a law 
unto himself. He can make almost any speed 
he chooses. 

The power principle of the gasolene vehicle 
is very simple. It is a well-known fact that 
when gasolene is mixed with air in proper pro- 
portions and ignited, it explodes violently. By 
admitting this mixture at the end or head of 
the engine cylinder, and exploding it at the 
proper moment, the piston is driven violently 
forward, and then, by the action of the fly- 
wheel or an equivalent device, it is forced back 
again, and the motor is kept in motion. Most 
gasolene engines are of what is known as the 
four-cycle variety. During the first impulse 
of the piston the vapor is drawn into the end 
of the cylinder, durino^ the second it is com- 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 155 

pressed by the return of the piston, in the third 
it is exploded, and in the fourth the products 
of the combustion are driven out, and the end 
of the cylinder is ready for another charge. 
The explosion of the gas is produced in the 
most approved motors by means of an electric 
spark, there being no fire anywhere connected 
with the machine. Owing to the constant com- 
pression of the gases and the succeeding explo- 
sions, a gasolene motor becomes highly heated, 
and in order to maintain a normal temperature, 
it must be provided with a jacket of cold water, 
or a peculiar ribbed arrangement of iron for in- 
creasing the radiating surface. A vast number 
of ingenious devices are used for making all of 
these processes as simple as possible. One mo- 
tor is so arranged that no igniter is necessary, 
the gas being compressed in the cylinder to 
such a degree that it explodes of its own heat, 
thereby doing away entirely with electricity or 
any other sparking device. In France most of 
the gasolene vehicles are still provided with 
what are known as ^'carburetters," or small 
chambers where the gas and air are mixed in 
the proper proportions and heated before they 
are driven into the cylinder. In this country 
carburetters have been largely done away with, 
the gas being mixed as it passes into the cyl- 
inder. 



156 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

Every driver of a gasolene vehicle must know 
these general facts about the mechanism of his 
motor. He must know how to fill the gasolene 
and water tanks, how to replenish or regulate 
the battery which ignites the gas, and he must 
understand the ordinary processes of cleaning 
and oiling machinery. When he is ready to 
start, he must connect up the sparking device 
and turn the wheel controlling the piston until 
the explosions begin. After that, he must see 
that the valves which admit the air and the gas 
are carefully adjusted, so that the mixture is 
admitted to the cylinder in the proper propor- 
tions, and then he is read}^ to go ahead, steering 
and controlling his engine by means of levers, 
and operating the brake and gong with his feet. 
All gasolene vehicles are provided with numer- 
ous means of stopping, besides the ordinary use 
of the brake, so that there is practically no 
possible danger of a runaway. The Duryea 
vehicle, for instance, has no fewer than five dif- 
ferent means of turning off the power of the 
motor, all within convenient reach. The sec- 
retary of the company that manufactures this 
vehicle told me that he had often stopped his 
carryall within 20 feet, when going at a speed 
of 20 miles an hour, without great inconven- 
ience to the passengers. By a clever arrange- 
ment for changing gearings, the gasolene vehicle 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 157 

can be made to ascend almost any hill, and it 
can be turned in half the space necessar}^ for a 
horse vehicle. 

It is astonishing how little fuel it takes to run 
a gasolene vehicle. One manufacturer showed 
me a phaeton weighing 700 pounds which he 
said would run 100 miles on five gallons of 
gasolene, a bare half-dollar's Avortli. A tricycle 
manufactured by the same company, weighing 
150 pounds, will run 80 miles on three pints of 
gasolene. 

Gasolene vehicles vary in cost, over an even 
wider range than electrical vehicles. A tri- 
cycle can be obtained as low as $350, while an 
omnibus may cost into the thousands. A first- 
class road carriage, built with all the latest im- 
provements and highly serviceable in every 
respect, can be obtained for $1,000. At this 
price, the manufacturers assert that gasolene 
power is much cheaper than horse power. One 
motor- vehicle expert has made some interesting- 
comparisons, based on an average daily run of 
25 miles for five years — more than the maxi- 
mum endurance of a first-class horse. His esti- 
mates represent ordinary city conditions, and 
rate the cost of the gasolene used at one-half 
cent a mile: 



158 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 



GASOLENE MOTOE VEHICLE. 

Original cost of vehicle .... |1,000 00 
Cost of operation, 1 cent per mile, 

25 miles per day 456 50 

^N'ew sets of tires during five years. 100 00 

Kepairs on motor and vehicle . . 150 00 

Painting vehicle four times . . . 100 00 
Storing and care of vehicles, $100.00 

per year 500 00 

$2,306 50 

HOKSE AND VEHICLE. 

Original cost of horse, harness, and 

vehicle $500 00 

Cost of keeping horse, $30.00 per 

month, five years 1,800 00 

Repairs on vehicle, including rubber 

tires 150 00 

Shoeing horse, $3.00 per month, five 

years 180 00 

Repairs on harness, $10.00 per year. 50 00 

Painting vehicle four times . . . 100 00 

$2,780 00 

''At the end of five years," explained this 
expert, ' ' the motor vehicle should be in rea- 
sonably good condition, while the value of the 
horse and carriage would be doubtful. There 
is always the possibility that at least one of the 
horses may die in five years, Avhile the motor 
vehicle can always be repaired at a compara- 
tively nominal cost. But even assuming that 



THE MODERN 310 TOR VEHICLE. 161 

the relative value of each is the same at the end 
of five years, the cost of actual maintenance 
during" that period would be $1,306.50 for the 
motor vehicle and $2,280 for the horse and 
vehicle, or $973.50 in favor of the motor vehi- 
cle. This comparison is really doing more than 
justice to the horse, because a motor vehicle can 
do the work of three horses without injury." 

Steam has been successfully applied to the 
heavier grades of vehicles, notably trucks, fire- 
engines, and omnibuses ; and two or three 
American manufacturers have gone still fur- 
ther, and have produced light and natty steam 
buggies and runabouts, and even steam tri- 
cycles. Steam vehicles are easily started and 
stopped, and fuel and water are always readily 
obtainable; but there is also the disadvantage 
of a slight cloud of steam escaping from the 
exhaust, accompanied by more or less noise. 
Moreover, in many States there are regulations 
(mostly unenforced in the case of motor vehi- 
cles) against the operation of steam-engines ex- 
cept by licensed engineers, and it is probable 
that steam automobiles will not be widely ac- 
cepted for pleasure purposes until the inventors 
have succeeded in producing a strictly automatic 
engine. 

Much has been said as to the use of com- 
pressed air for heavy trucks, and several im- 
11 



163 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

meiise corporations Lave been organized to pro- 
mote its use. The air is compressed at a central 
station, and admitted to heavy steel storage 
bottles, or tubes, connected with the truck and 
used much like steam. The main difficulty in 
the process has been the sudden cooling of the 
machinery when the air is released from pres- 
sure and begins to take up heat. Often the 
pipes and valves are frozen solid. To deal with 
this problem, a jacket of water heated by a 
gasolene flame is provided for " reheating " the 
air, a difficult and cumbersome process. Owing 
to the weight of the steel tubes, the compressed- 
air vehicles are enormously heavy, and, like 
electric vehicles, they must return to some 
charging station, after travelling 20 or 30 
miles, for a new supply of power. And yet 
both inventors and financial promoters are 
sanguine of ultimate success with them. 

A Chicago inventor has been building a truck 
in which he combines gasolene and electrical 
power. An eight-horse-power gasolene engine 
situated over the front axle drives an electrical 
generator, which in turn feeds a small storage 
battery, thus producing power as the vehicle 
moves, and rendering it entirely independent 
of a charging station. One man can handle 
the entire truck, and it is said that the cost of 
operation will not exceed 80 cents a day. The 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 163 

main objection to this system, as Avitli com- 
pressed air, is the enormous weight of the vehi- 
cle, \yhich is upwards of 9,000 pounds. The 
truck has a carrying capacity of eight tons, 
making a total of 25,000 pounds. Such a vehi- 
cle presents problems which modern pavement 
builders have yet to solve. 

But the time is certainly coming, and that 
soon, when all heavy loads must be drawn by 
automobiles. Recent English experiments, al- 
ready mentioned, have established the feasibil- 
ity of the auto-truck even in its present experi- 
mental stage, and the inventor needs no further 
encouragement to prosecute his work. It is 
hardly possible to conceive the appearance of 
a crowded wholesale street in the day of the 
automatic vehicle. In the first place, it will 
be almost as quiet as a country lane — all the 
crash of horses' hoofs and the rumble of steel 
tires will be gone. The vehicles will be fewer 
and heavier, although much shorter than the 
present truck and span, so that the streets will 
appear much less crowded. And with larger 
loads, more room, and less necessary attention, 
more business can be done, and at less expense. 

A ISTew York manufacturer produces an odd 
variation of the motor vehicle in what he calls 
a ''mechanical horse." It is a one- or three- 
wheeled equipment provided Avith an electric 



164 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

motor, and it can be attached to almost any 
kind of carriage or wagon body and used for 
propulsion like a veritable meclianical horse. 

As to just what form the future motor vehicle 
will take there is the widest diversity of opin- 
ion. Business clashes with art. Horse car- 
riages are built high so that the driver can see 
over the horse and avoid the dust. The first 
motor vehicles were merely " carriages- with - 
out-the-horse, ' ' and some of them looked clumsy 
and odd enough, ^' bobbed off in front," as one 
enthusiast told me. Strangely enough, how- 
ever, manufacturers say that at present the pub- 
lie demands just such vehicles, the low, light, 
and comfortable models being too much of an 
innovation to sell. 

'' But you may depend upon it," one manu- 
facturer told me, ''the future motor vehicle 
will be within a step of the ground, with an 
artistically rounded front, neither a machine 
nor a carriage-without-the-horse, but a new 
and distinct type — the motor vehicle. ' ' 

The utility of the automobile in any city is in 
direct proportion to the condition of its streets. 
It is hardly surprising that manufacturers are 
receiving the greatest number of inquiries from 
cities like Buffalo and Detroit, where the pave- 
ments are good, and from California and part 
of E"ew England. The automobile has had such 



THE MODERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 167 

acceptance in France because the highways are 
all as smooth as park paths. Bicycling already 
has had a profound influence in spurring the 
road-makers, and the introduction of the motor 
vehicle will be still more effective. Colonel 
Waring estimated that two-thirds of all street 
dirt is traceable to the horse. A.i present it 
costs E'ew York nearly $3,000,000 a year to 
clean its streets. With new pavements such 
as the new soft-tired vehicles and the absence 
of pounding hoofs would make possible, street 
cleaning would become a minor problem. And 
new asphalt pavement, the best in the world, 
could be put down at the rate of 40 miles a 
year for what New York now spends for half 
cleaning its streets. 

As yet American law-makers have hardly 
touched on the subject of motor vehicles. In 
I^ew York, if drivers keep oat of Central Park, 
display a light, ring a gong, and do not speed 
faster than eight miles an hour, no one inter- 
feres with them. Similar regulations prevail 
in Boston, and in other American cities. In 
Brooklyn the parks are free. France and Eng- 
land, on the other hand, hedge in automobile 
drivers with all manner of rules and regula- 
tions, and require them to be officially licensed. 
In France, by recently promulgated articles, 
every type of vehicle employed must offer com- 



168 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

plete conditions of security in its mechanism, its 
steering gear, and its brakes. The constructors 
of automobiles must have the specifications of 
each type of machine verified by the Service des 
Mines. After a certificate of such verification 
has been granted, the constructor is at libert}^ 
to manufacture an unlimited number of vehi- 
cles. Each vehicle must bear the name of the 
constructor, an indication of the type of ma- 
chine, the number of the vehicle in that type, 
and the name and domicile of its owner. No 
one may drive an automobile who is not the 
holder of a certificate of capacity signed by the 
prefect of the department in which he resides. 
The regulations are most explicit on the 
important question of speed. In narrow or 
crowded thoroughfares the speed must be re- 
duced to walking pace. In no case may the 
speed exceed 18|^ miles an hour in the open 
country, or 12^ miles an hour when passing 
houses. Kelative to signals, the regulations say 
that ' ' the approach of an automobile must, if 
necessary, be signaled by means of a trumpet." 
Each automobile must be provided with two 
lamps, one white, the other green. Racing is 
allowed, provided an authorization is obtained 
from the prefect and the mayors are warned. 
In racing, the speed of 18^ miles an hour may 
be exceeded in the open country, but when 



THE 310DERN MOTOR VEHICLE. 169 

passing houses, the maximum of 12^ miles must 
not be exceeded. 

One curious difficulty in connection with the 
new vehicle is the difficulty of finding suitable 
English names to designate it and its driver. 
The French, with characteristic readiness in 
getting settled names for things, have, as al- 
ready noted, formally adopted the word '' au- 
tomobile " for the vehicle and "chauffeur" 
(stoker) for the driver. But we of the English 
tongue are slower. At least a dozen names 
have been used to a greater or less extent, such 
as "motor carriao:e," " auto-carriao^e, " and 
" horseless carriage." In England, " self -pro- 
peller " is popular and so is "auto-car," the 
latter being apparently the favored designa- 
tion. "Motor vehicle" seems to be the more 
generally accepted name in this country. But 
whatever it is, or is yet to be called, the thing 
itself must now be rated an accepted and estab- 
lished appliance of every-day life. 




PHOTOGRAPH OP A LADY'S HAND, SHOWING THE BONES, AND A BING ON 
THE THIRD FINGER, WITH FAINT OUTLINES OF THE FLESH. 

From a photograph taken hy Mr. P. Spies, director of the " Urania," Berlin. 



CHAPTER y. 



X-KAY PHOTOGKAPHY 



Dr. liontgens Great Discovery. 

Perhaps no inveiitoi' ever achieved world- 
wide distinction so quickly as Dr. William 
Konrad Rontgen. He discovered his famous 
X-Ravs on iN^ovember S, 1895; in December he 
described them before the Wllrzburg Physico- 
Medical Society ; in January the marvel of the 
new rays which penetrate and photograph 
through almost every known substance was 
known all over the world, as well to news- 
paper readers as to the learned societies. A 
few months later many prominent scientists, 
both in Europe and in America, were experi- 
menting with Rontgen's rays, and within a 
year they had become a regular and exceed- 
ingly important factor in surgical operations. 
Moreover, no one disputed the originality of 
Dr. Rontgen's discovery; he had invented the 
first machine for photographing through solid 
substances, for taking pictures of the skeleton 
framework of the human body through the 



174 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

flesh. 'Eo one ever before had done that, and 
the scientific world was quick with its appre- 
ciation and liberal with its honors. 

And yet this discovery, which many scien- 
tists rank side by side with Lister's system of 
antiseptics in its importance as a life saver, was 
not the result of happy chance. It was not 
mere luck. At the time that Dr. Rontgen 
saw the X-Rays shimmering and glowing for 
the first time on a bit of sensitive paper he was 
past fifty 3^ears old, and during the greater 
part of his life he had been working quietly 
but industriously and thoughtfully with the 
great problems of physics and electricity. He 
laid the foundation of his career in a thorough 
education at Zurich, his birthplace, and at 
Utrecht. Seven years before the discovery he 
had become a professor at the Royal Univer- 
sity in the quaint old Bavarian town of Wiirz- 
burg. Here, in a bare little laboratory in an 
equally modest two-story house, with few of 
the modern appliances, he made his famous ex- 
periments, and from here he went out when 
the Avorld heard, of him to receive the praise 
and decorations of his emperor. And after 
that he returned to his work, just as if he 
wasn't famous. 

Dr. Rontgen (pronounced Rentgen) is a tall, 
slender, somewhat loosely built man, with a 




DTI. AVTLLIAM KONllAD Kr)JN'TGEN, UISCOVEREE OF THE X-RAYS. 
From a X)hotograph htj TIdiifstaciiac, F ra itlforf-oii-the-Main. 



X-EAY PHOTOGRAPHY. 177 

busily beard and long hair rising straight up 
from a high white forehead. When he is ex- 
cited or much in earnest he thrusts his fingers 
through this mass of hair until it bristles all 
over his head. He has an amiable face, with 
kindly although penetrating eyes. His voice 
is full and deep, and he speaks with the rapidit}^ 
of great enthusiasm. Indeed, his whole bear- 
ing tells of boundless energy and unremitting 
vigor. One visitor compared him on first 
sight to an amiable gust of wind. 

Previous to the discovery which made him 
famous, Dr. Rontgen had actually been pro- 
ducing and working with X-Eays for some 
time without knowing it. Indeed, other scien- 
tists had been doing much the same thing — 
experimenting all unconsciously on the very 
verge of the greatest discovery of years, but it 
remained for Dr. Eontgen, with his keener 
scientific insight, to see the unseen. 

The famous electrician Hertz, whose discov- 
eries have made possible inore than one great 
invention, had tried sending a high-pressure 
electric current through a vacuum tube, a so- 
called Crookes tube. A vacuum tube is a ves- 
sel of very thin glass, having a platinum wire 
fixed in each end. This vessel is as nearly 
empty of everything as human ingenuity can 
make it ; even the air is pumped out until only one 
13 



178 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

one-millionth of an atmosphere remains. Hertz 
connected one of these tubes to the poles of his 
battery by means of the platinum wires. When 
the discharge began he observed that the anode 




COINS PHOTOGRAPHED INSIDE A PUKSE. 

From a photograph hij A. A. C. Swjnton, Victoria Street, London. 

—that is, the end of the tube connected with 
.the positive pole of the battery — gave off cer- 
tain peculiar and faint bands of light. But 
these were quite insignificant compared with 
the brilliant and beautiful glow at the other or 




SKELETON OF A FROG, PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH THE FLESH. THE 
SHADINGS INDICATE, IN ADDITION TO THE BONES, ALSO THE 
LUNGS AND THE CEREBRAL LOBES. 



From a photograph by Professors Inibert and Bertin-Sans; reproduced i 
the " Presse Medicate," Paris. 



the courtesy of 



X-RAF PHOTOGRAPHY. 181 

negative end of the tube, which is called the 
cathode. This glow resembled somewhat the 
fierce burning of an alcohol lamp, only it was 
softer, more evanescent, and more striking in 
its coloring. It produced brilliant phosphor- 
escence in glass and many other substances, 
and Professor Lenard, Hertz's assistant, ob- 
served, in 1894, that the rays — ^'' cathode 
rays," as they were called — would penetrate 
thin films of wood, aluminum, and other sub- 
stances. But this was as far as any of the ex- 
perimenters who preceded Eontgen succeeded 
in going. 

Strangely enough, both Hertz and Lenard 
produced X-Rays in abundance without know- 
ing it. These were, indeed, present in the 
glow from the cathode, only they were entirely 
invisible to the human eye. They are differ- 
ent from the rays described by Lenard, in that 
they are not deflected — that is, turned aside — 
by a magnet, and they are incomparably more 
powerful in range and in penetrating power. 
It will be seen, therefore, that while Dr. Eont- 
gen was not Avorking in a wholly new field, 
his discovery is none the less entirely original. 

The discovery itself was made in a peculiarly 
interesting way. Dr. Eontgen had been ex- 
perimenting steadily for several weeks with his 
Crookes tubes. One day he had covered the 



182 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




PICTUKE OF AN ALUMINUM CIGAR-CASE, SHOWING CIGAKS 
WITHIN. 

From a photograph by A. A. C, Swinton, Victoria Street, London. Exposure, 
ten minutes. 



tube Avith a light-excluding black shield. 
Then he had darkened his laboratory so that 
not a ray of light could anywhere enter. To 
the eye everything was absolutely black. 
When the electric current Avas turned on, the 




6 



A TTFMAN FOOT PHOTOOTIAPHED THKOTTOH THE SOLE OF A SHOE. 
THE SHADUNa SHOWS THE PEGS OF THE SHOE AS WELL AS 
TRACES OF THE FOOT. 



From a photograph by Dr. W. L. Eobb of Trinity College. 



X-RAY PHOTOGRAPHY. 185 

hooded tube did not show even a glint of light ; 
but something on a shelf below began to glow, 
very strangely. It was a piece of sensitive 
paper — barium platino-cyanide paper. Dr. 
Kontgen knew that no light could come from 
the tube, because the shield that covered it was 
wholly impervious to light — even the strongest 
electric light. Where, then, did it come from? 
Dr. Rontgen began at once an eager investiga- 
tion, moving the sensitive paper from side to 
side and covering the tube with a still denser 
screen. And finally he came to the conclusion 
that certain unknown rays, whether of light or 
not, he did not know, were actually coming 
through the screen, and giving the sensitive 
paper a distinct luminescence. It was contrary 
to all reason, to everything that the text-books 
taught, and yet Dr. Rontgen was forced to be- 
lieve it. And having discovered the existence 
of the new rays, he began at once to experi- 
ment with them. He found that they readily 
penetrated paper, wood, and cloth, and that 
the thickness of these mediums made little dif- 
ference. That is, they would penetrate a thick 
book almost as easily as they would a single 
sheet of paper. Then he tried photographing, 
and found to his astonishment that the rays 
affected the sensitive film of the photographic 
plate, leaving the shadows of the objects ex- 



186 THE BOY'S IBOOK OF INVEh^TIOm. 

posed plainly outlined. For instance, lie 
placed bits of platinnni, alaminmn, and brass 
inside of a wooden box, and found that not 
only did he get skiagraphs (shadowgraphs) of 
them through the wood, but all the nails that 
held the box together and the brass hinges 
were likewise reproduced. Then he photo- 
graphed a spool of wire, the wooden ends of 
the spool leaving a very faint shadow, and the 
wire a dark one. When he tried glass, which 
is one of the most transparent of substances so 
far as ordinary light is concerned, he found 
that the new rays passed through it only with 
difficulty, and that aluminum was much more 
transparent to them than glass. In other words, 
if we lived in an X-Ray world we might use 
aluminum for windows to let in the X-Ray 
' ^ light, ' ' and glass for shutters to keep it out. 
After many experiments of this kind, it sud- 
denly occurred to Dr. Rontgen that if the new 
rays penetrated all manner of substances, they 
would also penetrate the human body ; that, in 
fact, they were probably going straight through 
his hands and his head as he worked with them. 
So he placed his hand, palm down, on a photo- 
graphic plate, still in its black holder, arranged 
the Crookes tube above it, turned on the cur- 
rent, and in a short time he had a photograph, 
dim, it is true, but perfect, of the bony frame- 



X-EAY PHOTOGRAPHY. 189 

work of his hand — the first of the liind ever 
talven, and a marvel up to that time absolutely 
inconceivable. 

A little later he built a closet of tin jast big 
enough to accommodate one man comfortably, 
and fitted it up with an aluminum window. 
Outside of the window he placed his new ap- 
paratus. Only the new rays would, of course, 
shine through the aluminum, and he could 
study them at his leisure. But after long and 
careful experimenting he could not decide what 
the new rays really were, and although many 
theories have been advanced by prominent 
scientists, a really satisfactory explanation is 
still wanting. It is- pretty generally believed, 
however, that Rontgen's rays are only a " mode 
of motion ' ' through the ether — that is, they 
are produced by a certain peculiar kind of vi- 
brations in the ether. Dr. Rontgen himself 
gave them the name " X-Rays " — the unknown 
rays. 

But if the exact nature of the rays was a 
mystery, their uses and importance became 
familiar almost immediately. The apparatus 
was so simple that it could be fitted up in 
almost any laboratory. It consisted merely of 
a battery or dynamo current; a coil, usually a 
Rhumkorff coil, for intensifying the current, 
and a Crookes tube, which might have any one 



190 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS, 

of twenty-odd shapes. As a result of this sim- 
plicity thousands of surgeons and scientists 
were able to prepare experimental apparatus, 
and some of the results -in this country were 
excellent, especially in photographing the hu- 
man skeleton. 

Even Edison, the greatest of American in- 
ventors, took up the work with great enthu- 
siasm, and he shortly invented a curious but 
simple device by means of which one may actu- 
ally see the bones of the hand or foot through 
the flesh. He called it the fliioroscope. It is 
merely a wooden box, larger at one end than 
at the other, the smaller end being so con- 
structed and padded with cloth that it will fit 
exactly over the eyes without admitting any 
light. The other end of the box is covered 
Avith a sheet of thin cardboard coated with a 
chemical compound w^hicli becomes fluorescent 
— that is, shines or glows — when placed in 
range of the X-Eays. By holding this box be- 
tween one's eyes and a Crookes tube, and plac- 
ing one hand on the sensitive cardboard, the 
X-Kays will readily pierce the flesh, and the 
dark shadow of the skeleton of the hand may 
be seeUo In this way a doctor can tell quickly 
the location of a bullet or a needle in the hand 
or foot, for he is able to look through the flesh 
as if it were glass. 




THOMAS A. EDISON EXPERIMENTING WITH THE RONTGEN RAYS. 



X-RAY PHOTOGRAPBY. 195 

The Kontgen rays have been put to many 
marvellous uses, most of them connected with 
bone photography in surgery cases. And, 
strangely enough, when a physician is ready 
to photograph a broken arm, for instance, to 
see if it is properly set, he never thinks of 
removing the splints or the bandages; he sim- 
ply photographs through them. And that is 
the reason why such a photograph often shows 
pins and buckles. Frequently, in cases where 
the patient is very weak, the photograph is 
taken through the bed-clothes as well as 
through the bandages — it doesn't make the 
slightest difference to these wonderful rays. 
It takes from two minutes to more than a hour 
to get a good skiagraph, but the operation is 
no more painful, if we count out the necessity 
of keeping still, than having a snap-shot taken. 

One of the earliest skiagraphs, showing the 
medical importance of the X-Rays, was taken 
in England. A boy of nineteen had injured 
his little finger playing ball, so that it was 
bent at the last joint, and he could neither ex- 
tend it nor bend it further down. Any at- 
tempt to do so caused him sharp pain. Before 
the skiagraph was taken the doctors declared 
that the finger must be amputated. A skia- 
graph showed, hoAvever, that there was only a 
little bridge of bone uniting the last two joints, 



196 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

thereby preventing the proper flexing of the 
finger. As soon as this was known an an- 
aesthetic was administered, and by the use of a 
little force this bridge of bone was snapped, 
and the finger saved. That was the first fin- 
ger to the credit of Dr. Rontgen's discovery. 

Since then the X-Rays have been used con- 
stantly for finding bullets embedded in the 
flesh — X-Ray machines are now taken to war 
with every civilized army — for finding needles 
that have been driven into the foot, for ex- 
amining deformities of the bones, and, more 
recently, for photographing foreign bodies in 
the larynx and windpipe, and even in the 
stomach. Think of the sufferings caused by 
probing for bullets, shot, and needles in the 
flesh, all saved by an easily taken skiagraph ! 

An English Avoman came to a doctor saying 
that she was suffering tortures from her shoes, 
so that she found it difficult to walk, and she 
even wanted some of iier toes amputated. A 
skiagraph, showed exactly what the trouble 
was. She ]iad been wearing shoes much too 
small for her, and the bones had become avo- 
fully tAvisted and bent. One sight of the pho- 
tograph convinced her that she must Avear 
broad-soled shoes. In a somcAvhat similar 
case in Austria, the doctors found tliat the 
great toe of the patient Avas twice as large as 



X.RAY PHOTOGRAPHY. 



lUD 



it should be. They foimd by feeling that 
there were tAvo bones instead of one, but they 
could not tell Avhich Avas the normal bone and 




CORKSCREW, KEY, PENCIL WITH METALLIC PROTECTOR, 
AND PIECE OF COIN, AS PHOTOGRAPHED WHILE IN- 
SIDE A CALICO POCKET. 

From, a photograph by A. A. C. Swinton, Victoria Street, London. Four min- 
utes' exposure through a sheet of aluminum. 

Avhich the one to be removed. A skiagraph 
showed the whole condition instantly. 

One of the strangest uses to Avhich X-Rays 
ever have been put Avas at the instance of a 



200 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

Philadelphia woman. She had been travelling 
in Egypt, and had brought home what she 
believed to be the hand of a mummy. But 
some of her friends told her how Egyptian 
curiosities are likely to be manufactured and 
sold to unsuspecting travellers as genuine relics. 
One friend, himself a great traveller, assured 
her that she had bought a mere mass of pitch, 
plaster of Paris, and refuse mummy-cloth, not a 
hand. For a long time there was no way of 
deciding the question, until at last the owner 
of the relic had an X-Pay photograph taken. 
And lo and behold! there in the picture was 
the complete skeleton of the hand of some 
ancient Egyptian ; the relic was genuine, after 
all. 

Another curious and important use of X-Pays 
is in determining genuine from imitation dia- 
monds. A European scientist has made many 
tests in this field, and he finds that while the 
X-Pays will penetrate the genuine diamond 
and leave almost no shadoAv in the photograph, 
the false ones are nearly opaque to tte rays, 
and appear very dark in the photograph. This 
unusual new test may some time supersede all 
others. 

A great many experiments have been made 
looking to the use of X-Pays in curing dis- 
eases. Several prominent physicians assert 




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X-EAY PHOTOGRAPHY. 203 

that the new rays kill all germs — consump- 
tion, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and so on — and 
that by applying them properly to the diseased 
portion of the body a cure may be effected. 
This has not been proved as yet, but we may 
hope that the belief is well founded. In any 
event, we may expect to hear of many won- 
derful developments in coming years from Dr. 
Rontgen's discovery. 




THE KITE BUOY IN SERVICE. 



CHAPTER YI. 

TAILLESS KITES. 

What They Will Do and How to Make Them. 

One of the most famous of kite- flying ex- 
plorers compares mankind to crabs living at 
the bottom of the sea — only ours is a sea of 
atmosphere. Here we lie close to the earth, 
knowing comparatively little of the vast heights 
of air above us, of the immeasurable waves 
which sweep through it back and forth, and of 
the strange phenomena of heat and cold, rain- 
fall, snow, sleet, frost, dew, cloud formations, 
tornadoes, waterspouts. The Eiffel Tower, the 
tallest structure ever built by man, reaches 
only 1,000 feet high; the Washington Monu- 
ment is a mere 555 feet, while the top of the 
earth's atmosphere lies more than forty -five 
miles straight above us. Until the recent ex- 
periments in kite-flying were begun men had 
never been able to make regular records of the 
conditions of the atmosphere at any particular 
spot more than a few hundred feet above the 
earth. It is true that aeronauts had reached 



208 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

great heights in their balloons, but their pas- 
sage through the air was so swift and so un- 
certain that they added little to scientific 
knowledge. Strangely enough, while regular 
investigations were being made a mile or more 
beneath the earth's surface, in the deepest 
mines, science was unable even by its cleverest 
devices to go 1,500 feet above the earth and 
remain there long enough to make any observ- 
ations of great A^alue. 

But with the coming of the modern kite all 
this is changed. And it is wonderful enough 
to watch the kite scientists forging higher and 
higher every year into the atmosphere, just as 
explorers in the Arctic are pushing northward 
to the pole. 

On :November 7, 1893, Mr. W. A. Eddy sent 
a kite 5,595 feet in the air — a little inore than 
a mile. This was regarded at the time as a 
most astonishing performance, but three years 
later, on October 8, 1896, tlie same experi- 
menter made a record of 9,400 feet. In the 
meanthne many other investigators were at 
work in England, Australia, and in many parts 
of the United States, so that the limit kept 
creeping up and up, a thousand feet every year, 
until, on February 28, 1899, the kite flyers of 
the Blue Hill Observatory near Boston broke 
all previous records by sending a team of kites 



TAILLESS KITES, 



209 



12,507 feet, or nearly two and one-half miles 
above the surface of the earth. And there is 
no doubt that they will go still higher and find 
out still more important things about our 
atmosphere. 

It seems odd to speak of the kite as a new 




THE EDDY TAILLESS KITE. 

Front view, showing how the line is attached. 

invention, for kites were used in China and 
Japan long before the beginning of written 
history. The Chinese have long built kites in 
the form of liuge dragons, and have made 
them play curious music as they floated high 
in the air — keeping away the evil spirits, as all 
Chinamen firmly believe; and kite-fighting is 
14 



210 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

a familiar sport in Japan. Every schoolboy 
knows how Franklin drew the lightning from 
the clouds by means of a kite string, and more 
than fifty years ago a Scotch experimenter, 
Dr. Alexander Wilson, had sent up thermome- 




THE EDDY TAILLESS KITE. 

A storm-fltjer.—The diamond-shaped figure in the centre is an opening made 
to lessen the loind pressure. 



ters attached to kites in order to determine 
temperatures at high altitudes. 

But the tailless kite, the kite that will lift a 
man high in the air and that will penetrate 
miles into space, is a purely modern invention. 
And curious enough a flock of these new kites 
appears — those of the Eddy model resembling 
giant bats, and those of the Hargrave model 
giving the impression of a number of big paste- 




fcq S 






312 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

board boxes with the bottoms knocked out. 
Some of them are so large, twice the height 
of a man and more, that when they first ap- 
peared in various parts of the country, people 
took them for mysterious air ships, and the 
newspapers were filled with the accounts of 
various people who had seen these strange 
ships in the skies. 

There are two important varieties of the new 
kites. The first is that invented by "W". A. 
Eddy, of Bayonne, I^ew Jersey. It is modelled 
somewhat after the kite used so long ago by 
the Malays, and it looks a little like the old- 
fashioned boy's kite, only it is broader and it 
has no tail. The other new kite was invented 
by LaAvrence Hargrave, of Australia. It is 
merely a very light box frame, with a band of 
cloth around each end, and it is so very differ- 
ent from every preconceived notion of a kite 
that one can hardly believe it will fly until he 
actually sees it in the air. It is an entirely 
original invention, and there are many who 
think that it is the mechanism which will event- 
ually develop into a successful flying machine. 
Many other forms of kites are used by experi- 
menters, but they are all variations or combi- 
nations of these two. 

Mr. Eddy began flying kites to amuse his 
little daughter, but it wasn't long before he 



TAILLESS KITES. 



213 



became deeply interested in them from a scien- 
tific point of view. Indeed, so remarkable 
were some of his early experiments that they 




NEW YORK, EAST RIVER, BROOKLYN, AND NEW YORK BAY, 

FROM A KITE. 

From a kite photograph taken by Mr. W. A. Eddy. 



won for him the name ' ' Kite Kin^ 



In 



1895 he had built kites strong enough to carry 
upward small objects of considerable Aveight, 
and so he sent aloft a photograph camera, and 



314 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 



by a peculiarly ingenious device he sprung the 
shutter and took a beautiful picture, a bird's- 
eye view of the earth below, the first of the 



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CITY HALL PARK AND BROADWAY FROM A KITE. 

From a photograph taken from, a kite bij Mr. W. A. Eddy. City Hall Park, 
New York City, appears in the foreground, tvith Broadway back of it. 

kind ever taken. After that he flew his kites 
over ]^ew York, and made pictures of City Hall 
Square and the tops of some of the great build- 
ings as they look from above. Several times 
he was able to fly his kite far out, many blocks 



TAILLESS KITES. 



315 



away from the top of the building on which 
he stood, and he argued from this that the kite 
could be made a valuable adjunct in war. For 




Frankfort, street. 
PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEW FROM A KITE. 



This view, from a photograph taken from a kite by Mr. W. A. Eddy, shows a bit 
of New York City at the crossing of Frankfort and William Streets, 



instance, if two armies lay behind breastworks 
not far apart, one of them might, when the 
wind was in the right direction, fly a kite over 
the enemy's works, and take a photograph 



216 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

showing the exact strengtli of the fortress in 
guns and in men. The enemy might fire on 
the kite, but the target would be small and 
hard to hit, and a good many bullets might 
puncture its cloth sides without bringing it 
down. A kite flown from the war-ships be- 
fore Santiago might have shown the strength 
of the enemy in the shore batteries. More 
than this, kites may some day be used as ter- 
rible engines of destruction. Think what havoc 
could be wrought in an enemy's camp if a tan- 
dem of kites should be sent over it, perhaps in 
darkness, with a load of dynamite, to be 
dropped at the proper moment. Mr. Eddy 
has found from his experiments that it would 
be perfectly possible to bombard Staten Is- 
land with dynamite dropped from kites sent 
up on the J^ew Jersey shore. 

By far the most exciting and dangerous of 
kite experiments has been the attempt to make 
kite ascensions. Think of it! A man carried 
aloft on a kite string, supported by a few cloth- 
covered boxes. This feat has been performed 
by Lawrence Hargrave; Captain B. Baden- 
Powell, of the Scots Guards; by Lieutenant 
Hugh D. Wise, of the United States Army, 
and still later by Charles H. Lamson, of Port- 
land, Maine, who was actually carried more 
than fifty feet into the air on a single kite. 



TAILLESS KITES. 



219 



Captain Baden-Powell had some most thrill- 
ing experiences. During his experiments, he 
had occasion to build what Avas probably the 
largest kite ever flown. In May, 1894, he 
made a huge contrivance of bamboo and can- 
vas, thirty-six feet high, with an area of 600 




THE START. 



square feet — as large as the side of a house. 
The very first time he sent it up it collapsed 
with a mighty crash, and came tumbling to 
the ground. 

' ' I smashed dollars and dollars worth of 
bamboo, ' ' he says. ' ' Again and again when I 



220 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

thought I had a really good piece of apparatus, 
some little detail would go wrong; the kite 
would rise up in the wind, turn sideways, and 
come plump down against the ground, smash- 
ing every bone in its body." 

But these are the trials that a kite enthusiast 




A LULL IN THE WIND. CAPTAIN BADEN-POWELL IN THE 
BASKET. 



must endure. Captain Baden-Powell, however, 
was not to be beaten. He kept on trying, un- 
til, on June 27, 1894, the great kite went up in 
fine style. The question was: Would it lift a 
man ? The wind freshened up sharply, there 
was a creak in the basket, and up it went with 



TAILLESS KITES. 



221 



one of Captain Baden-Powell's friends aboard 
—the first time, perhaps, in the history of the 
world, that a man had been lifted from the 
ground by a single kite. After that it lifted 
the Captain himself. Following this success, 




"will it lift a man?" 

Captain Baden-Powell made numerous ascents 
with tandem kites, even giving a public exhi- 
bition before the wise men of the British Asso- 
ciation. 

In the course of his experiments, Captain 
Baden-Powell at one time nearly lost his life. 



222 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

In his own words : ' ' I very nearly experienced 
a new sensation. ' ' It seems that one of his sets 
of kites was flying low, and the long, light line 
that held it lay entangled on the ground. The 
Captain stooped over to straighten it out, when 




UP IT WENT." 



in some inexplicable manner his foot became 
entangled. Before he knew it, the kites sprung 
upward with a freshening breeze, threw him 
down, and began dragging him swiftly across 
the field by his foot. Just as he was being 
lifted entirel}^ from tlie ground, a bystander 



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^^^^^^^^^^^^^K^^^t^^^^^^^^K^L^ta^Mkit^m^mm^^B^^ 



CAPTAIN BADEN-POWELL IN THE BASKET LEAVING THE GROUND, BUT 
STILL HELD BY BYSTANDERS. 



TAILLESS KITES. 225 

seized him, dragged him down, and cut the 
rope. Lieutenant H. D. Wise had a similar 
and equally dangerous accident while he was 
experimenting Avith man-lifting kites on Gov- 
ernor's Island in l^ew York Harbor. One day 
his kite line became entangled in the reel, and in 
order to get it loose, he tied himself to the line 
above the reel, thinking he could hold the kites 
while he made the necessary repairs, the wind 
then being somewhat slack. He drew his knife 
and cut the line close to the windlass. It 
parted with an unexpected snap, jerking the 
knife out of his hand, and before he was aware, 
the great kites were dragging him recklessly 
across the lawn in the direction of the open 
sea. After a moment of mad scrambling, the 
Lieutenant succeeded in regaining his feet. He 
was now only a few rods from the sea-wall, 
while the kites were far out above the blue 
waters of the harbor. There was a single 
chance for safety ; a lamp-post stood well off to 
one side. Lieutenant Wise saw it and made a 
wild dash sideways for it, clasped it in both 
arms, and clung to it in a fond embrace until 
help arrived. It required three stout soldiers 
to lead the runaways back to their tether. 

Lieutenant Wise made numerous ascents to a 
height of forty feet ; there would have been no 

difficulty in going higher had it been deemed 
15 



226 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




IN THE BASKET, FORTY FEET FROM THE GROUND. 

safe. For his first ascent he used four kites, 
with an area of 312.6 square feet. The four 



TAILLESS KITES. 227 

kites weighed fifty-nine pounds, the ropes 
weighed twenty pounds, and the chair and 
man weighed 150 pounds, a total of 229 pounds 
lifted. Lieutenant "Wise believes that while 
the kite cannot be expected to supersede the 
balloon, it will be A^ery valuable in war time 
for signalling, both with lights and with flags. 
Kites are cheap, light, and can be rolled up in 
a small space, and he suggests that ten of them 
would be a valuable equipment for a war- 
ship. This number would easily lift a man to 
such a height that he could survey the sea with 
a telescope for many miles in all directions. 

Captain Baden-Powell speaks even more fa- 
vorably of the future of the kite. 

' ' As compared with a balloon equipment, ' ' 
he says, 'Hhis apparatus presents important 
advantages. My entire ' kiteage, ' with ropes 
and all, weighs only a little over a hundred 
pounds, and can be carried by two men. When 
the order is given to ascend, I can unpack, set 
up, and send up the kites in about five min- 
utes. I now require no manual labor to haul 
down, as the kites can be lowered by a gentle 
pull on the ' regulating line, ' which determines 
the angle they present to the wind. If the 
apparatus catches in a tree and gets torn, it 
makes but little difference, and the injury is 
easily remedied. If it were a balloon to Avhich 



228 TH:E BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

the mishap befell, the gas would be lost, three 
wagon-loads more would be required to refill 
it, and it wo aid need very careful patching be- 
fore it could be used again. The same advan- 
tage would be held by the kite if a hostile bul- 
let had penetrated either apparatus. And 
then, finally, the kite would involve, origin- 
ally, probably not the twentieth part of the 
cost of the balloon, perhaps not a hundredth 
part." 

Another interesting application of the mod- 
ern kite has been suggested by Professor J. 
Woodbridge Davis, of New York. For some 
years he has been experimenting with a dirigi- 
ble, or steerable, buoy, which may be drawn 
across wide st retell es of water at the end of a 
kite line. It is merely a long wooden tube, 
about three inches in diameter, and shaped 
very much like a torpedo, with a cone of tin 
dragging behind as a rudder. A message 
placed in this buoy can be sent from a wrecked 
ship to shore, or in some cases from the shore 
to the wreck, or a line attached to the buoy 
may be dragged through the water. Professor 
Davis has experimented repeatedly with this 
buoy and with one of a larger pattern, and he 
has succeeded in making the kites drag them in 
various directions even in strong gales. 

By far the most important and significant 



^ 




EMPTY BASKET ABOUT SEVENTY-FIVE FEET FKOM THE 
GROUND. 



TAILLESS KITES. 331 

work now being done with kites is the system- 
atic exploration of the upper heights of the air. 
Much valuable scientific knowledge has already 
been gathered by the Blue Hill Observatory of 
Boston. And more recently, the Weather 
Bureau of the United States government has 
taken up the work on a very extensive scale, 
and is making regular observations, at the uni- 
form height of a mile, at sixteen stations, lo- 
cated in different parts of the country. 

The Weather Bureau has reduced kite-flying 
to a thoroughly scientific system, so that the 
powerful kites which it flies can be controlled 
with the greatest ease. When flying at an ele- 
vation of from 6,000 to Y,000 feet, one of the 
Weather Bureau kites, supporting the instru- 
ments which record the conditions of the air, 
will pull from sixty to eighty pounds, if not 
more, and from 8,000 to 10,000 feet of wire 
will be out. To wind in all this wire under 
such conditions is really a very laborious opera- 
tion, and generally requires two men at pretty 
hard work for three-quarters of an hour or 
more. As a substitute for the ordinary kite 
string or cord, the Weather Bureau, as well 
as all other advanced flyers, uses fine piano 
wire, which is smaller and much stronger in 
proportion than any hempen or flaxen cord. 
The winding of two or three miles of this fine 



232 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

wire on a drum or reel introduces a serious 
problem. So tight does the wire become that 
2,000 turns of it will produce the almost incon- 
ceivable pressure of 500 tons. A Avooden reel 
is crushed like so much pasteboard, and it has 
been found necessary to use the strongest pos- 
sible drums of iron, reinforced with heavy 
flanges. Indeed, at the Arlington kite sta- 
tion, opposite Washington, the kite wire is 
reeled in by steam power — a lively little oil 
engine easily doing the work of several men. 
What would the boys of ten years ago have 
said if they had been shown a complete ma- 
chine for flying kites by steam ? 

The improved Hargrave kite is used almost 
exclusively for the regular government obser- 
vations, although experiments with new forms 
are constantly being made, many having curi- 
ously shaped cells, some with divergent ends, 
wings, tails, and other queer appendages. The 
average size is seven feet long, six feet wide, 
and three feet high. The steel wire used is 
30-1,000 of an inch in diameter, and weighs fif- 
teen pounds to the mile, and is capable of sus- 
taining a tension of 300 poun.ds. This is none 
too heavy, because the pulling power of these 
kites in strong winds frequently reaches 120 
pounds or more. To have a kite fly away with 
the expensive instruments which it carries 





rHOTOGrvAPniNG from a kite line. 

Ill this picture the square box suspended froni the upper line is the camera. The 
hall hanging from the camera is the burnished signal, tvhich, by its fall, informs 
the operator on the ground when the shutter of the camera has opened. The shutter and 
the ball are controlled from the ground by the lower line. 



TAILLESS KITES. 235 

would mean a considerable loss, and the oper- 
ators do not run the risk of sending the kites 
up in very heavy winds. The reel carries 
20,709 feet, or nearly four miles of wire. 

But perhaps the most wonderful of all kite 
improvements is the little machine called a 
meteorograph, which makes the records. The 
whole thing weighs only a little more than two 
pounds, so that one of the big kites can carry 
it easily, but it tells an extended story about the 
temperature, the moisture, and the barometric 
pressure of the air and the velocity of the 
wind, making a complete automatic record of 
all of these things in ink on a sheet of paper 
wound on a cylinder. 

These records are made daily at each of the 
sixteen stations provided the weather is favor- 
able, and the sheets are forwarded to the 
Weather Bureau, where they are carefully 
compared and tabulated and then filed away 
for reference. One of the most interesting 
and practical developments of these observa- 
tions is the forecasting of cold and warm waves. 
Such changes in the weather are found to be 
apparent at a great height long before they 
reach the earth, and kite records have shown 
the approach of a change fully twenty-four 
hours in advance of its first indications at the 
surface. 



236 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

Another curious fact which the kite scientists 
have learned is that at the height of a mile 
there are virtually no regular daily changes of 
temperature. In other words, the nights are 
as warm as the days. On the other hand, the 
days at this height are very damp, while night 
air is as dry as that of the driest desert — just 
the reverse of what it is on the earth. And 




DIRIGIBLE KITE-DRAWN BUOY. 

This is the buoy invented by Prof. J. Woodbridge Davis for conveying mes- 
sages, food, or life-lines between disabled vessels and the shore. The buoy is 
drau-n over the water by the kite line, like the one shown above, the setting of 
the keel and the three guy ropes giving it whatever direction is desired. 



when a wind blows at these great altitudes, it 
blows like a tornado. It has been found that 
wind velocities at the height of a mile are 
four times as great as they are nearer the 
earth, and winds blowing 100 miles an hour 
are not uncommon. 

Kites have been flown in rain-storms, in 
snow-storms, and in every other conceivable 
condition of weather. Indeed, the men who 



TAILLESS KITES. 



237 



r 



make this their business have found that kites 
can be flown much more successfully at night 
than in the day- 
time, owing to the 
greater steadiness of 
the wind. 

The scientific kite- 
flyer finds much to 
tempt him into the 
field of electricity. 
Mr. Eddy has suc- 
ceeded many times 
in repeating Ben- 
jamin Franklin- s ex- 
periment of drawing 
sparks from the 
clouds. Indeed, he 
has beaten Franklin, 
for he has frequently 
brought sparks from 
a clear sky, so that he 
believes that electri- 
city is always pres- 
ent in large quanti- 
ties in the air. An 
experimenter in the Blue Hill Observatory 
has sent up a kite coated with tin-foil for col- 
lecting electricity, but Mr. Eddy uses a special 
copper collector. Mr. Marconi, the famous in- 







11 



to Si 






238 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

ventor of wireless telegraphy, who has actually 
used kites for supporting one of his sending 
wires, has suggested the possibility of getting 
enough electricity from the atmosphere with 
kite collectors to send messages, although he 
never has had time to develop the idea. It is 




FIG. 1. — VIEW OF A MODERN BOX KITE. 

certainly a rich field for the ambitious in- 
ventor. 

It is comparatively easy to construct one of 
the new box kites, and the pleasure which 
comes from flying it will well repay the effort, 
for it will mount more easily and fly higher 
than any of the old-fashioned kites. Any 
moderately ingenious boy can make a box kite 
from the following description given by Mr. 
C. F. Marvin of the United States Weather 
Bureau, but he must be careful to follow di- 



TAILLESS KITES. 239 

rections accurately, and not to slight a single 
detail of the work. 

Mr. Marvin advises the use of the very best 
straight-grained spruce for the sticks, and 
either lonsdale cambric or calico for the cover- 
ing. Some small tacks, and coarse, waxed 
linen thread, are also required. The sticks 
should be cut in the following dimensions : 

Four lengthwise corner spines, one-fourth of 
an inch thick, five-eighths of an inch wide, 
and forty inches long. 

Two central lengthwise spines, three-eighths 
of an inch square by forty inches long. 

Two short vertical struts, one-fourth of an 
inch thick, one inch wide, and eleven and 
three-eighths inches long. 

Four diagonal struts, one-fourth of an inch 
thick, five-eighths of an inch wide, ajid thirty- 
seven and three-fourths inches long. 

The real backbone of the kite consists of a 
central truss, which is made up as shown in 
Fig. 2 {AB in Fig. 1). 

The long sticks are three-eighths of an inch 
square. At five and. one-half inches from each 
end a slight notch is formed on one side to re- 
ceive the uprights. A notch is shown at n, and 
its depth should not exceed one-sixteentli of an 
inch. The uprights inust be cut perfectly, 
square and true on the ends, and are then cut 



240 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

to the form shown at B. These are seated 
squarely in the notches of the long spines, and 
firmly lashed in place with coarse, waxed linen 
thread, as showrn enlarged in Fig. 5. Waxed 
shoemakers' or harness-makers' twine is the 
best material for this purpose, but any coarse 
thread or fine string, thoroughly waxed, will 
suffice. 

Fig. 3 shows the form to which the corner 



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B 




FIG. 2. — CENTKAL TRUSS. 

longitudinal spines should be dressed, the long,, 
straight edge being slightly rounded, as shown 
in the end view. ]N"otice that the notches at 
the opposite ends are not at the same distance 
from the ends. 

The covering of the kite is made of two long 
strips of cloth. Both edges of the strips should 
be hemmed, even if one edge has a selvage, 
and when so hemmed, the width should be 
just twelve inches. The total length of the 
strip, when stretched about as it Avill be on the 



TAILLESS KITES. 241 

kite, should be ninety-six and one-half inches, 
the half inch being allowed for the lap of the 
goods in sewing the two ends together. It 
may be remarked here that it is generaly bet- 
ter to carefully tear the cloth to the proper 
length and width, rather than try to cut it, as 
more accurate results will be gained by the 
first method. The opposite ends of each cloth 
strip should be carefully and evenly lapped the 



■40'^ 



« 4 " • 

PIG. 3. — LONGITUDINAL COIiNEll SPINE. 

one-half inch, and strongly sewed together with 

a double seam, thus forming two endless bands. 

The next step is to mark the cloth bands at 

the places that are to be fastened to the frame. 

Stretch each cloth band out smooth and straight 

over two thin sticks run through inside the 

band. It is well to make the seam in the band 

come over or near the edge of one of the sticks. 

When the band is smooth and evenly stretched, 

draw a pencil line across the band exactly in 

the middle, where it turns around the edge of 

each stick. Let the line near the seam be 

marked A, and the opposite line B. I^ow 

shift the cloth around the sticks so that the 

lines A and B a])proach each other, but do not 
16 



242 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

pass. Carefully adjust the band so that when 
evenly stretched the line A is just twelve 
inches from B, and mark the cloth, as before, 
where it passes over the edge of each stick. 
Shift the cloth again still farther aronnd the 
sticks; this time let the lines A and B pass each 
other, and, when they are again separated just 
twelve inches and the cloth evenly stretched, 
draw pencil lines at the edges of the sticks as 

FIG. 4. — DIAGONAL STRUT, 

before. Time and care spent in laying out these 
lines accurately on the cloth, so as to divide it 
into equal portions when stretched, will be well 
repaid in the even flying of the kite. 

The cloth bands are now ready to be tacked 
to the sticks. Put one of the bands over the 
central truss and tack the line A down with 
five or six small (two-ounce) tacks to one of 
the sticks ; for example, as shown from atoh, 
Fig. 2. The opposite line, B, must be tacked 
to the opposite stick from c to d. The remain- 
ing band is similarly tacked to the opposite end 
of the truss. Finally, the four corner longi- 
tudinal spines are passed within the bands, and 
the appropriate lines of the cloth tacked to the 
sticks. The only point needing special atten- 



TAILLESS KITES. 



243 



tion at this step is to arrange the corner spines 
so that their notches will stand in proper rela- 
tion. Eeferring to Fig. 3, it will be recalled 
that the small notch at one end of each spine 
is nearer the end than at the opposite end. In 
tacking the spines to the cloth, all that is nec- 
essary is that one pair of spines in opposite 
corners shall have the notches the shorter dis- 




FIG. 5. — FIRST FORM OF BRIDLE. 



tance from the end, and the notches of the 
other pair be at the longer distance. In other 
words, tack short-ended spines in the C and D 
corners, as they appear in Fig. 1 ; then the long 
ends of the remaining spines must occupy the 
^ and incomers of Fig. 1. When so arranged, 
one diagonal strut stepped in the notches will 
pass in front of, and the other behind, the 
uprights of the central truss. 



244 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

All that now remains to be done is to fit up 
the diagonal struts. Fig. 4 shows a finished 
diagonal strut. It is difficult to determine be- 
forehand the exact length these should be, be- 
cause the amount the cloth bands will stretch 
is uncertain. The length as indicated in Fig. 4 
is about right, if all the other dimensions speci- 
fied herein are carefully adhered to. Make up 
a pair of struts about a half -inch too long at 
first; by trying them in the kite and cutting 
out the notches deeper and deeper a perfectly 
satisfactory fit can be secured and the cloth 
braced out smooth and taut. Care must be 
taken to keep the two struts of the same pair 
the same length. To prevent the forks from 
splitting off, it is quite necessary to lash the 
ends just back of the notch with good, waxed 
thread. The diagonal struts are to be inserted 
within the cells of the kite, so that the notched 
ends enter the shallow notches of the corner 
spines, shown at a and h, Fig. 3. One di- 
agonal strut passes in front of, and the other 
behind, the upright of the central truss in each 
cell, and the three sticks are firmly bound to- 
gether at the point of crossing with waxed 
thread. 

Two methods of bridling or fastening the 
string to the kite will be described. Cut off 
about six feet of stout cord and tie one end to 



TAILLESS KITES. 245 

the central truss at A^ as shown in Fig. 2, the 
cord passing through small holes pierced in the 
cloth covering. The knot employed at this 
point is shown enlarged at JL, Fig. 5. The 
flying line should be tied to the free end of this 
cord by means of bowline knots, as shown at 
B, Fig. 5. This knot is strong, never slips, 




FIG. 6. — SECOND FORM OF BRIDLE : (7, ENLARGED KNOT 
LOOSENED. 

and can be easily untied, no matter how much 
the line may have been strained. 

The one-point attachment of bridle, de- 
scribed above, is better suited to strong than 
light winds, and sometimes in lighter winds it 
may be more satisfactory to employ the two- 
point attachment of bridle shown in Fig. 6. 
In this the free end of the six-foot piece of cord 
is shown tied to the central truss at Z>, thus 



246 THE BOY'S BOOK OW INVJSNTlONS. 

forming the bridle, «, J, c ; the main line be- 
ing attached at the point c by a kind of knot 
shown enlarged at one side. This will not slip 
of itself, but the point of attachment can easily 
be adjusted as may be desired. 

To be perfectly safe, the flying line for this 
kite should have a tensile strength of from 
fifty to sixty pounds, and be equally strong 
throughout. 

If the wind is favorable for flying, the best 
way to start the kite in flight is to run out 150 
feet or so of twine while the kite is held by an 
assistant. When all is ready, the assistant may 
toss the kite upward a little in the direction in 
which it is to go. It will take care of itself 
afterward. It is important that the kite be 
cast off directly in line with the wind, other- 
wise it may seem, to dart badly. When fairly 
up, the kite may sweep a little from side to 
side, but if it ever darts or turns over, there is 
something radically wrong, probably due to an 
uneven distribution of the cloth surface, or 
some permanent distortion of the framework. 
Sometimes the weight of the wood varies, and 
one side is heavier than the other. This should 
be corrected by weighting the light side with a 
small strip of sheet lead, or otherwise. 

If the wind is very light, a finer twine may 
be used in flying, and it may be necessary to 



TAILLESS KITES. 



247 



run a little with a long string out, in order to 
get the kite into upper and more rapidly mov- 
ing currents. 

When the wind is very strong, drop the ball 
of twine on the ground so that the cord can 
pay out rapidly, and let the kite go up directly 
and quickly from the hand. 




CAPTAIN BADEN-POWELL FOLDING UP A BIG KITE. 




SAIIAII BERNHARDT MAKING A PnONOGRAPH RECORD. 



CHAPTER YII. 

THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 

Making Pictures of Sounds and Sounds of Pictures. 

This is the wonder of the phonograph: ib is 
a machine which makes pictures of sounds, and 
then, at will, changes these pictures back into 
sounds again. A picture of a matchless solo 
by Melba is made in Paris on a little wax 
cylinder ; the cylinder is sent through the 
mails to ISTew York like any other picture, 
here to be transformed again into the voice of 
Melba, repeating all the sweetness and richness 
of the original tones. The voice of Mcolini, 
preserved in pictures, still sings, although the 
singer himself is dead. And this is something 
hard to realize, even at this day when the phon- 
ograph has become almost as familiar as the 
sewing-machine. 

Every man has in his throat a delicate mem- 
brane Avhich is set to quivering every time he 
speaks. The vibrations thus produced in turn 
set the air to quivering, and these waves roll 
through space, very much like the waves on 



252 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

the seashore, until they strike on the drum or 
membrane of the ear. That is the way we 
hear; it is nature's telephone. If the vibra- 
tions are rapid we say that the voice is high; 




SCOTT S PHON AUTOGRAPH. 

The first suggestion of a talking machine, in which the sound pictures were 
scratched on a cylinder covered with lampblack, by means of a hog's bristle. 

if slow, we say that it is deep. Each note has 
its own different vibrations. 

Away back in 185Y Leon Scott, knowing 
these simple facts in physics, conceived the 
idea of making sounds produce pictures. It 
was an idea as original as it was bold. In the 
experiments which followed, Scott constructed 
a curious little device called the Phonautograph, 
which vividly foreshadowed a part of the 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 253 

operation of the phonograph. It consisted of 
a thin membrane — a bit of bladder — stretched 
tightly over a barrel-shaped frame. In the 
center of this membrane a stiff hog's bristle 
was firmly fastened. On speaking with the 
lips close to the outer end of the frame the 
membrane vibrated in accordance with the 
sound waves thus produced, the bristle moved 
back and forth and scratched a continuous 
wavy track on a revolving cylinder which had 
been well daubed with lampblack. This wavy 
line was an actual picture of the human voice. 
But it Avas a mere laboratory experiment, and 
no one even dreamed that such a sound picture 
could be again transformed into speech — until 
the idea came to Thomas A. Edison with the 
suddenness of inspiration. 

It was in 1877, long before Edison had become 
Avidely famous. At that time his experiments 
were carried on in a shop in ]S"ewark, New Jer- 
sey, where he was surrounded with a little 
company of trusted workmen. It was at the 
time when Edison often became so absorbed in 
his schemes for inventions that he forgot his 
meals, and frequently worked night and day 
for two or three days together, keeping all of 
those about him as busy as he was himself. 
Sometimes he would call in an organ-grinder 
to keep the men awake and cheerful until the 



254 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

strain was over, and then he would hire a boat 
and take all hands down the bay with him on 
a fishing excursion. It was with this single- 
ness of purpose and loyalty that Edison and his 
men always worked together. 

]^ot long ago I visited Edison's great lab- 
oratory at Orange, ISTew Jersey, where more 
than seven hundred men are employed in coin- 
ing the visions of the master's brain. I found 




EDISON'S FIRST PHONOGRAPH. 



Edison himself sitting in one of his character- 
istic positions, half leaning upon a table filled 
with drawings, his head on his hand and his 
fingers thrust through his hair. He told me 
briefly how he came to invent the phonograph, 
and his story was later much extended by John 
Ott, who was with him through all of the ex- 
periments. 

The inventor had been working during the 
early part of the year 1877 in developing and 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 255 

improving the telephone, inventing the trans- 
mitter which has since borne his name. This 
consisted of a disk of carbon, having a sharp- 
pointed pin on the back of it. He had noticed 
many times that when he spoke against the 
face of the disk the vibrations would cause the 
pin to prick his fingers or to indent any soft 
substances held near it. This was one fact; he 
carried it in mind, but it gave him no particu- 
lar suggestion. It was, indeed, only a step be- 
yond Scott's discovery. 

Previous to this time Edison had invented a 
remarkable device for the automatic repetition 
of telegraph messages. It consisted of a sim- 
ple apparatus by means of which the dots and 
dashes of the original message were recorded 
in a series of indentations on a long, narrow 
strip of paper. This record could be fed into 
a sending machine and the message re- trans- 
mitted without the service of an operator. In 
other words, Edison had made pictures on pa- 
per of the sounds communicated over the tele- 
graph wires, thereby approaching the phono- 
graph from another direction. 

^'In manipulating this machine," Edison 
wrote in 1888, "^ I found that when the cylinder 
carrying the indented paper was turned with 
great swiftness it gave off a humming noise 
from the indentations^ — a musical, rhythmic 



256 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 



sound, resembling that of human talk heard 
indistinctly." 

Here was another fact — unconnected as yet. 




CROSS SECTION OF EDISON S FIRST PHONOGRAPH, SHOWING 
METHOD OP OPERATION. 

but exceedingly important as ])ointing to the 
great discovery. 

"I remember," John Ott told me, "that 
Edison had been working at liis l)ench in the 
laboratory nearly all day, silent for the most 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH, 257 

part. Quite suddenly he jumped up and said 
with some excitement : ' By George, I can 
make a talking machine ! ' Then he sat down 
again and drew the designs of his proposed 
machine on a slip of yellow paper. I don't 
think it took him above ten minutes alto- 
gether. ' ' 

On the margin of that design Edison marked 
'^$8," and handed it to his foreman, John 
Kruesi. 

' ' My men all worked by the piece in those 
days," Mr. Edison told me, "and when I 
wanted a model made I always marked the 
price on it. In this case it was $8, I remem- 
ber, Kruesi went to work at it the same day, 
and I think he had it completed within thirty- 
six hours. We used to try all sorts of things, 
and most of them were failures; so that I 
didn't expect much from the new model, at 
least at first, although I knew it was correct 
in principle." 

But Kruesi fitted the tin-foil on the cylinder, 
and brought the machine to Mr. Edison. The 
inventor turned the handle and spoke into the 
mouthpiece : 

*'Mary had a little lamb, 

Its fleece was white as snow, 
And everywhere that Mary went 
The lamb was sure to go." 
17 



258 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

Then, he set the recorder back to the start- 
ing-place and began to turn the cylinder. At 
the very best he had not expected to hear 
more than a burring confusion of sounds, but 
to his astonishment and awe the machine began 
to repeat in a curious, metallic, distant voice: 

' ' Mary had a little lamb . . ." 

And thus the first words ever spoken by a 
phonograph were the four simple lines of 
Mother Goose's melody. The idea had come 
to the inventor with a flash of inspiration, and 
the machine had proved its marvelous possi- 
bilities on the first trial. Few inventions ever 
have been conceived and carried to success so 
swiftly. Kruesi's eight-dollar machine, which 
could not now be bought for hundreds, is in 
the patent museum at South Kensington, 
London. 

This first machine, although it talked, was a 
very crude affair compared with the all but 
perfect phonographs of to-day. In principle 
it was exceedingly simple. There was a dia- 
phragm or membrane, having a sharp-pointed 
pin attached to its under surface. When sound 
waves, caused by a spoken word or a piece of 
music, struck this diaphragm, it vibrated, and 
the pin rose up and down. The cylinder on 
which the sound pictures or records were to be 




MAKING A IlECOKD ON ONE OP THE EARLY FORMS OF 
THE GRAPHOPHONE. 



^fHAyitfii 



c^ 




BHOWING HOW THE RECORD IS ENGRAVED ON THE WAX 
CYLINDER — MUCH ENLARGED. 



260 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

made was covered with tin-foil. At every vi- 
bration of the pin, indentations of various 
depths were made in this tin-foil. These little 
holes were so small as to be scarcely visible to 
the naked eye, but when the diaphragm was 
set back to the beginning and the cylinder was 
turned, the pin, travelling up and down over 
the rough road of indentations, caused the dia- 
phragm to vibrate and give out the same sounds 
which had been previously spoken into it. A 
reference to the pictures on pages 254 and 256 
will show clearly just how the machine worked. 
A is the plate or diaphragm, 1-100 of an inch 
thick, which vibrated when spoken against, 
driving the point P into the cylinder C. F is 
the mouthpiece, and D the crank by means of 
which the cylinder was turned. 

Few^ inventions ever awakened a world-wide 
interest more suddenly than did this of the 
phonograph. When it was first exhibited in 
the '^Tribune" building in E'ew York, every 
scientific paper, every magazine, and every 
newspaper in this and in foreign countries 
gave accounts of the invention, and dealt with 
its dizzying possibilities. Edison himself wrote 
an article for the ' ' ^orth American Review, ' ' 
in which he told of some of the marvelous 
uses to which the machine would be put in the 
future. 




PREDECESSOKS OF THE GRAPHOPHONE. 

Talking machines, one for recording and the other for reproducing sounds, 
as invented by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester A. Bell, and Professor 
Sumner Tainter of the Volta Laboratory Association. 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 263 

Edison patented his invention both in the 
United States and abroad, and manufactured 
a considerable number of machines, chiefly for 
use in college laboratories. Then he became 
deeply interested in a series of experiments 
with incandescent electric lights, and the pho- 
nograph dropped out of his mind for many 
years. 

In the meantime Alexander Graham Bell, 
the inventor of the telephone, had received the 
most distinguished honor that can come to an 
inventor — France had bestowed upon him the 
Yolta prize, an honor instituted by Emperor 
Napoleon the Great. It had been awarded 
only once before — to Faradaj^ — and it has 
never been awarded since. With the money 
portion of the prize, amounting to 50,000 
francs, Mr. Bell conceived the idea of forming 
an association for the advancement of the sci- 
ence of sound. To this association, composed 
of himself, Dr. Chichester A. Bell, and Charles 
Sumner Tainter, he gave the name ''Yolta 
Laboratory Association." From 1881 to 1885 
these three men labored hard upon improve- 
ments in the method of recording and repro- 
ducing sound, finally producing a machine 
differing from Mr. Edison's in that it engraved 
the sound pictures on a cylinder of wax instead 
of indenting them on tin-foil, a very great and 



264 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

important change, which enabled them to re- 
produce speech and music in a wonderfully life- 
like manner. This machine was called the 
grajpliojplione. 

Another machine, the gramophone, was in- 
vented by Charles Cros, a Frenchman. In 
this device the record is scratched on a metal 




?^eprt>du((2r' 



J^ecofde/ 



BETTINI SPIDER DIAPHRAGM ATTACHMENT. 

For making and reproducing difficult records. 



cylinder which has first been daubed with a 
Avaxy substance. The cylinder is then taken 
out and immersed in acid. Where the record- 
ing stylus has scratched the wax away there 
the acid does its work, etching in the solid 
metal the wavy sound pictures left by the 
stylus. The sounds are then reproduced as in 
the other machines. 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 265 

In later years Mr. Edison and Mr. Bell have 
made many improvements in the talking ma- 
chine until it has reached its present perfected 
state. 

Other important additions have been made 
by Lieutenant G. Bettini. Bettini discovered 
that all parts of the glass diaphragm used by 
Mr. Edison did not vibrate equally when 
spoken against. For instance, the center might 
vibrate at one speed and the sides at another, 
thereby producing the peculiar metallic or 
" tinny " effect which makes many phonograph 
records disagreeable. Consequently, instead 
of attaching the recording point directly and 
firmly to the center of the diaphragm, Bettini 
used what he called a ' ' spider " — a little 
frame having several legs, the feet of which 
rested against the diaphragm at many differ- 
ent points, thereby making the diaphragm sen- 
sitive to every variety of sound, even high 
soprano voices, which have been exceedingly 
difficult to record. Bettini uses a diaphragm 
of aluminum instead of glass. 

The sound pictures or records of the phono- 
graph are now engraved on a wax cylinder 
with a fine stylus, the point of which is a bit 
of sapphire. After one record is made it can 
be readily duplicated. The old-fashioned ear 
tubes are giving wa}^ to horns, which bring out 



266 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

the sound more distinctly, and distribute it 
over a whole room. When one record is worn 
out — and it can often be used more than a hun- 
dred times — the wax is shaved down and the 
cylinder is ready for another impression. Most 
of the modern talking machines are operated 
by clock-work, although some are fitted to run 
by electrical power, or even by foot-power like 
a sewing-machine. The prices vary from five 
dollars well up beyond a hundred dollars. 

One of the most interesting things in con- 
nection with the phonograph is the new pro- 
fession of record-making — for a real profession 
it is. At Mr. Edison's laboratory in Orange, 
l^ew Jersey, a whole building is devoted to the 
production of singing cylinders, instrumental 
music, band music, solo, and speaking cylin- 
ders. A curious and wonderful place it is. 
In one little room shut off from all the others 
by tight doors I saw a man seated on a tall 
stool. He was talking and laughing uproari- 
ously in Yankee dialect into the flaring end of 
a long tin tube. At the other end of this tube 
there was a phonograph with a boy about 
twelve years old watching the cylinder to see 
that the stylus was doing its work. The 
speaker, who had his coat off and was perspir- 
ing profusely, would first announce himself: 
'' A humorous sketch, entitled ' Uncle Eben in 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 269 

Fifth Avenue,' by the well-known comedian 

," and then he would begin his talk with 

no audience but the tin tube and the boy, who 
looked vastly bored. In another room there 
were several phonographs placed close together 
on a shelf, with their horns grouped around 
a slim 3^oung man, who was playing a lively 
jig on a banjo. Close behind him loomed 
the back of a piano, upon which a companion 
was playing an accompaniment. In still an- 
other room two men and a woman were sing- 
ing a church anthem into the receiving horn of 
a phonograph. Their heads were close to- 
gether, and both tlie men had their coats off, 
it being a hot day. Behind them on a pair of 
saw-horses stood a piano, which was being 
played with the utmost unconcern. If I had 
closed my eyes I certainly should have thought 
that I was sitting in church, and that the an- 
them was coming from the choir loft. When 
a record is finished it is taken out and repeated 
to see if it is connect, and the players or talkers 
gather around to hear their own words. If 
the cylinder is a success it is duplicated many 
times, and placed in the regular library of the 
phonograph, read}" to go out to the users of 
the machines in different parts of the countr}^ 
And yet records of this sort are not alwa^^s 
successful. Not every one can make a first- 



270 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

class phonograph record. Some there are 
whose voices are too soft to make distinct im- 
pressions in the wax. The best voice is one 
that is almost metallic in its timbre^even 
harsh and hard. For the same reason a cornet 
makes a far better record than a guitar ; a 
piano, from its sharp and ringing tones, is bet- 
ter than a violin. In this way the phonograph 
has developed its own especial singers and 
players. Some soloists and talkers, who have 
never been able to make a success on the stage, 
have earned a peculiar and valuable reputation 
of their own among the users of phonographs. 
They may be as awkward as they please or as 
unprepossessing of manner or of face — if only 
they sing so that their voices come out clearly 
and beautifully from the little wax cylinders, 
their fame is made. And some of these singers 
and players earn ver}^ large sums of money. 
They receive, in general, one dollar for every 
song they sing or every " piece " they speak, 
and they often make from twenty to fifty rec- 
ords in a day. 

In Mr. Bettini's studio more attention is 
given to voice records of famous men and 
women. Here Sarah Bernhardt came and 
talked into the phonograph, and here Cam- 
panari, Ancona, Plan9on, and other singers 
equally famous, have sung. Here, too, you 




A DUET WITH ACCOMPANIMENT. 
From a photograph loaned by Frank A. Munsey. 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH, 273 

may hear the voice of Mark Twain talking out 
with beautiful distinctness. Indeed, through 
this means, a famous man's voice may become 
as familiar as his picture, and it may go on 




ONE OF THE NEWEST TALKING MACHINES. 



talking and giving pleasure to the world long 
after the man himself is dead. 

Recently a phonograph with a large-sized 
cylinder has been constructed for making un- 
usually clear records. This improvement was 
18 



274 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

suggested by Thomas H. McDonald, and one 
wonders that no one thought of trying it be- 
fore, since the principle of the improvement is 
simplicity itself. The surface of the large 
cylinder moves much more rapidly than the 
surface of the small cylinder, and the groove 
cut by the recording stylus is much longer. 
That is, the stylus, instead of making a series 
of abrupt holes in the wax, as it does when 
the cylinder moves slowly, scoops out long hol- 
lows with sloping ends. There being no sharp 
crests or holes in the groove, the reproducing 
ball follows every gradual ascent and descent, 
and does not leap from crest to crest, blurring 
the sound, as in the case of some of the smaller 
cylinders. 

This new style of cylinder has been found to 
be especially valuable for recording the music 
of a full brass band or of an orchestra, and 
some exceedingly fine and popular records of 
this sort have recently been made. But of all 
phonograph records, jolly negro and comic 
songs are the most popular. E'ext to them 
come instrumental solos, and after that church 
chimes, quartettes, and so on. Recently a 
set of cylinder records have been made to play 
dance music, and at the same time to call the 
figures, so that for a small dancing party no 
regular musicians are needed. 



TEE STORY OF THE PRONOGRAPH. 375 

Another very wonderful development of the 
phonograph which is now in course of evolu- 
tion is the reproduction of entire operas. ^N'ot 
long ago Mr. Edison had a portion of the 
opera of '^ Martha" performed before one of 
his kinetoscopes ; he succeeded in taking 320 
feet of pictures. The acting of the opera can 
now be thrown in lifelike moving pictures on 
a screen, and at the same time the phonograph 
may sing the music which goes with each scene, 
so that together a portion of the opera will be 
completely reproduced — a marvel which could 
not have been imagined even ten years ago. 

It has been found that the phonograph will 
''hear" and record sounds too high and too 
low to reach the human ear. The very deepest 
tones to which our ears will respond have six- 
teen vibrations to the second, whereas the 
phonograph will record down to ten vibra- 
tions. And then, more wonderful than all, 
the pitch can be raised until we hear a repro- 
duction of these low sound waves — until we 
hear the unbearable. 

Within the last few years the phonograph 
has developed many curious and important 
uses. It has been employed with success as a 
teacher of languages. It reproduces perfectly 
the words and accents of a foreign tongue so 
that a student may hear the difficult inflection 



276 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

repeated over and over until he learns it, with- 
out a living teacher. Indeed, whole lessons, 
including the meanings of the various words 
and any necessary explanations, can be talked 
into the phonograph without the least diffi- 
culty. In similar manner the phonograph has 




A MODERN HIGH-CLASS PHONOGRAPH. 



been used for teaching small children their les- 
sons, and in one case that I know of a minister 
actually preaches his sermons first into a phono- 
graph and then sits back and listens to his own 
words as if he were a member of the congre- 
gation, noting the mistakes in delivery, and at 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 277 

the same time committing the sermon to mem- 
ory. In many scores of business offices the 
phonograph is used exclusively for purposes of 
dictation. The machine is frequently placed 
in a drawer of the desk, so that whenever the 
business man wishes to dictate a letter he 
merely opens the drawer, starts the machine, 




A ruoxoGiiAriiic kecokd. 

How a line of the song " She was Bred in Old Kentucky " looks on a wax 
cylinder. 



talks as long as he wishes, and then stops the 
cylinder. In this way he does without the 
services of a stenographer. At any time dur- 
ing the day the typewriter girl may come and 
take the record away, place it in her machine, 
insert the tubes in her ears, and copy the letters 
which the business man has dictated. In this 
way both may work without interruption. 



278 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

Several busy men in New York have pho- 
nographs in their offices into which visitors 
who call during their absence may tell of their 
errands. A phonograph in a restaurant or a 
barber shop has long been a popular attrac- 
tion, and I have known of a phonograph being 
used by a newspaper writer for dictating his 
articles.. Two St. Louis inventors have re- 
cently suggested the use of phonographs in 
place of the whistling buoys on dangerous 
shoals. One of these inventors says: 

' ' We intend to place one of our phonograph 
buoys on the noted Kitty Hawk reef at the 
mouth of the Savannah Hiver. At present a 
bell buoy marks that dangerous reef, and you 
know the action of the waves tolls the bell of 
the buoy. It will doubtless surprise many 
vessel captains to hear our buoy, with its clear, 
distinct sound, say, ' I am Kitty Hawk, Kitty 
Hawk, ' and they will hear it farther than they 
can hear the bell buoy." 

Many years ago Mr. Edison suggested the 
use of phonographs for recording the works of 
the greatest writers of fiction. He himself 
dictated a considerable extract of " ISTicholas 
Mckleby " into a phonograph, and he found 
that six cylinders, twelve inches long and six 
inches in diameter, would hold the entire 
novel. Think what a boon such records would 



THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 279 

be to a blind man, or, indeed, to a man who 
comes home with worn-out eyes from a long 
day's work in the office. The phonograph 
could talk off the story without a break, and 
if it had been dictated with expression and 




ANOTHER VIEW OF " SHE WAS BRED IN OLD KENTUCKY.' 

The records are here very much enlarged. That on the left shows the sound 
pictures on a rapidly revolving large-sized cylinder of the McDonald pattern. 
That on the right is one of the ordinary records, showing how much more 
abrupt the indentations are. 



spirit, the effect would be that of listening to 
a good elocutionist. 

And thus the phonograph has become a 
great factor in promoting the pleasure of the 
race as well as in assisting it with its work. 
The wonder of the invention — a machine which 
talks like a man — is yet new enough to make 
us feel as the famous Emperor Menelek of 
Abyssinia did when he first heard the phono- 



280 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

graph. After the recent victory in the Sou- 
dan, Queen Victoria spoke a message of friend- 
ship and good-will into a phonograph. The 
royal words were delivered one Sunday after- 
noon, the phonograph working perfectly. The 
Queen's voice was produced with great clear- 
ness, and Menelek insisted upon hearing the 
message repeated many times. First he would 
listen to it as it came from the trumpet, then 
he would use the ear tubes. And when it was 
over he relapsed into silence, and then ordered 
a royal salute to be fired, while he stood in 
solemn wonder before the strange machine that 
talked. 




Copyright, 1899, by Irving Underhill. 

THE TALLEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD. 
Park Row Building, New York City, twenty-nine stories high. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER. 

Story of the Tallest Building in the World. 

" A STEEL bridge standing on end, with pas- 
senger cars running up and down within it." 

This is the engaging definition of a ''sky- 
scraper ' ' given me by an architect who is as 
famous for his quaint conceits of speech as he 
is for his tall buildings. 

It seems odd to speak of any building as a 
new invention, since there have been buildings 
almost as long as there have been men; and yet 
the very fact — and. curious enough it is when 
you come to think of it — that the skyscraper is 
truly more a bridge than a building, and that 
cars do actually run on perpendicular tracks 
within it, makes it not only one of the latest 
feats of the inventor, but one of the very great- 
est. For thousands of years every large build- 
ing in the workl was constructed with enor- 
mous walls of masonry to hold up the inner 
framework of floors and partitions. It was 



284 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

a substantial and worthy method of construc- 
tion, and there seemed no need of changing it. 
But one day a daring builder with an idea as- 
tonished the world by reversing this order of 
construction, and building an inner framework 
strong enough to hold up the outside walls of 
masonry. The invention was instantly suc- 
cessful, so that to-day the construction of a tall 
building is ' ' not architecture, ' ' as one writer ob- 
serves, '' but engineering with a stone veneer." 

Ten years ago, in 1889, there was not a '' sky- 
scraper" in the world; to-day there are scores 
of them in American cities, the heights varying 
from seven stories up to thirty, making them 
by all odds the greatest structures reared by 
the hand of man. The idea of constructing a 
building like a bridge is said to have originated 
in Chicago ; it has, indeed, been given the name 
^' Chicago construction. " Some of the earliest 
buildings embodying the steel-cage idea were 
the Tacoma (completed in 1889), the Home In- 
surance, and the Rookery buildings of Chi- 
cago, and the Drexel Building in Philadelphia. 
IS'early all of these were constructed in spite 
of the opposition and prophecies of failure of 
scores of experienced builders, often including 
the building commissioners who issued the per- 
mits. 

Every invention has its reason for being. 



THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER, 287 

Unless it is needed, it does not appear. So with 
the skyscraper. Great cities had grown with 
a rapidity unknown anywhere in the world; 
business centres were much overcrowded; pro- 
gressive professional men wished to be within 
easy reach of the districts ^vhere money was 
making fastest. Property owners said : We 
can't spread oat, so we must go up. In ]N"ew 
York single acres are worth more than $Y,000,- 
000. Land of this value covered with build- 
ings of ordinary height could not be made to 
pay; again the conclusion was resistless: We 
must go up. Moreover, engineering and the 
various processes of steel construction had been 
advancing at great strides ; steel was compara- 
tively cheap, and a light skeleton framework 
cost less in the beginning and required less room 
than immense masonry walls. And, lastly, and 
by no means of least importance, the modern 
elevator had been invented. I remember once 
of talking with a grizzle-headed elevator man 
in what is noAV an old skyscraper. He had evi- 
dently done some quiet thinking as he travelled 
up and down, year after year, on his perpendic- 
ular railroad. 

'' Did you ever think," he asked, "that sky- 
scrapers would be an impossibility without ele- 
vators ? It's a fact. IS'othing above seven or 
eight stories without 'em. You'd never catch 



288 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

any business man climbing eight flights to his 
office." 

And yet if the elevator has made the sky- 
scraper a possibility, the skyscraper has in no 
less degree developed the elevator; both have 
gone up together, and both would seem to have 
approached very near to perfection. 

The building of a modern skyscraper is a 
mighty task, full of difficult problems, more 
difficult even than those connected with a 
great steamship, a great bridge, or even a rail- 
road line. Knowing how far the building is 
going up, the architect must determine from the 
character of the ground on which it is to stand 
how far it must go down. In ]S"ew York many 
of the greatest buildings have foundations so 
deep that they rest on the solid rock, seventy- 
five feet below the surface, and there are two 
or three stories beneath the street, as well as 
twenty or thirty above. In Chicago all of the 
great buildings rest on what may reasonably be 
called flat-boats. Indeed, Chicago is a floating 
city — floating on a bed of soft sand and mud. 
These boats are made of great timbers, driven 
straight down, or else of steel rails or steel 
girders laid criss-cross and filled in with cement 
until they form a great solid slab of iron and 
stone. And as might be expected, these boats 
frequently tip a little to one side, so that many 




REALTY BUILDING, PHILADELPHIA. 
As it looked August I2th. (.See page 285.) 



THE 310DERN SKYSCRAPER. 291 

of the greatest skyscrapers are slightly out of 
plumb, like modern towers of Pisa, although 
they do not lean enough to be at all dangerous. 
I remember distinctly how a keen-eyed news- 
paper man made the discovery tha,t one of the 
most famous skyscrapers in the world — and one 
of the largest — was out of plumb . He was in th e 
sixteenth story of the building across the street. 
The doctor who occupied the room had tied 
a weight to a window cord in order to keep the 
shade well down, thus making it a plumb-bob. 
It so happened that the newspaper man glanced 
along this cord and across the street to the cor- 
ner of the great building opposite. At first he 
couldn't believe his eyes; the cord was cer- 
tainly plumb, or else all the school-books were 
incorrect ; therefore the building must certainly 
be leaning to one side. He called several 
friends, and each of them bore him out in his 
observation. He rushed off in great feather, 
secured an engineer, and had careful ]neasure- 
ments taken. The building was found to lean 
nine inches to the eastward at the top, and 
there was a news '' beat " in one of the news- 
])apers the next morning. 

All great buildings are expected to settle, 
and the main effort is to make this settle- 
ment uniform throughout. In New York the 
tall buildings which rest on a foundation of fine 



293 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

wet sand have all settled from one-quarter to 
nine-sixteenths of an inch. The Marquette 
Building, Chicago, and the St. Paul Building, 
Kew York, have provisions made at the bases 
of their columns for lifting them up with pow- 
erful hydraulic presses and inserting packing 
of steel should they settle too much. 

And thus it will be seen how difficult and 
delicate a problem the builder must meet in 
securing a solid foundation for the end of his 
bridge which goes into the ground. He must 
know, not only just how much the entire build- 
ing will weigh, almost to the ton, but he must 
know the weight of each part of it, so that the 
load may be equally distributed over the foun- 
dation, thereby preventing any tendency to 
tip over. He must also compute the ''live" 
weight which his building is expected to carry, 
that is, the furniture, the safes, the tenants 
themselves. And in Chicago, where the foun- 
dation is clay, he must not put a weight of 
more than one and one-half to two tons on 
every square foot of surface ; the solid rock of 
N^ew York will bear more. Moreover, he must 
determine exactly how much strain each steel 
girder, each column, even each rivet will bear. 
If he overloads any single girder, he endangers 
his whole building. Then he must calculate 
how much wind is going to blow against his 




THE FIRST FLAG AT THE SUMMIT OF REALTY BUILDING. 

As it looked two weeks later, August 27th, (See page 285.) 



THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER. 295 

building, and from what direction most of it is 
coming ; he must even calculate on the pound- 
ing of horses' hoofs and heavy wagons on the 
pavement outside; he must make provisions for 
supplying water to the top stories, where the 
city cannot pump it; he must provide amply 
against possible fires — and that's one of the 
most difficult of all the problems ; he must see 
to the prevention of rust in his steel work ; he 
must secure proper ventilation and lighting, so 
that every room has its windows with a street 
front if possible; and, more difficult than all 
else, he must keep well within the hampering 
limits of the city's building laws. These are 
only a few of thousands of intricate details, 
not to consider the tremendous question of cost 
with which the builder must grapple. And then 
it sometimes happens that he is blamed if he 
does not make this tower of steel, with its hun- 
dreds of rectangular windows, a thing of archi- 
tectural grace and. beauty. 

Perhaps it will be possible to give the best 
idea of what a modern skyscraper really is, 
when completed, by relating some of the im- 
portant facts concerning what is now the 
greatest modern building — indeed the tallest 
inhabited building in the world — the Park Eow 
Building in l^ew York City. It was designed 
by R. H. Robertson, and it stands as one of 



296 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

the greatest monuments to the daring and en- 
terprise of the American builder. It can be 
seen from far out in ^ew Jersey, from Staten 
Island, from Long Island, and the lookout of 
every ship that enters the harbor sees it loom- 
ing like a huge tower above its neighbors. 

To begin with, it has twenty-nine stories, 
and its height from the sidewalk to the tops of 
the cupolas on the towers is 390 feet. Thus it 
is over 100 feet taller than the dome of the 
Capitol at Washington, and 85 feet above the 
Statue of Liberty. Even these figures do not 
represent its full proportions. The flagpoles on 
top of the building are 57 feet in height. The 
foundations extend 51 feet below the surface. 
Therefore, from the base of its foundations to 
the top of its flagpoles the new building spans 
501 feet, or nearly the tenth of a mile, exceed- 
ing by 48 feet the extreme height of the 
Pyramids. 

The restaurant on top of the main building 
is 308 feet above the street, while the topmost 
offices — and they are all large, comfortable 
rooms — are 340 feet in air. Their windows 
command a view of over 40 miles. 

The new building has a frontage of 103 feet 
on the street which it faces, of 23 feet on a side 
street, and of 47 feet on a rear alley. . It may 
therefore be said to look in three directions. 



liu^y- 



mmm 

i:ilUi!lillil|f 

siwiffiif 








FIRST STONEWOIIK, SIXTH AND NINTH STORIES, REALTY BUILDING. 

As it looked September 10th. (See page 285.) 



THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER. 399 

It is nearly four times as high as its main front- 
age. The difficulty presented by that propor- 
tion is an architectural problem of some mag- 
nitude in itself. 

It need not be said that a vast amount of 
steel and stone, glass, and other material enter 
into the construction of such a building. As a 
matter of fact, the building weighs about 20,000 
tons. The material of Avhich it is constructed 
would build all the houses of an ordinary sub- 
urban town, with enough left over to construct 
a good-sized church. 

As with all skyscrapers, the foundation of 
the Park Kow Building is its most interesting, 
as well as its most perplexing, feature. Sev- 
eral acres of Georgia timberland were denuded 
to furnish the 1,200 great pine piles, some of 
them 40 feet long, which were driven into the 
sand of the site. These piles are in rows, two 
feet apart, under the vertical columns which 
support the building. They were driven into 
the ground as far as they would go under the 
blows of the one-ton hammer. They are thus 
prepared to sustain a weight of 20 tons, although 
the most that will be put upon them is about 
16 tons, a margin great enough to give any 
builder a sense of safety. Moreover, they are 
below the water-line, so that they are inde- 
structible by the ordinary process of decay. 



300 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

"When the piles were driven as far as possi- 
ble their tops were cut off, and the sand was 
cleared away for a foot down around their tops 
and concrete was poured about them, forming 
a solid rock surface resting securely upon theii' 
tops. On this concrete base were laid largo 
blocks of granite, and above them the brick 
piers of the building. 

The Aveight of the building is not allowed to 
come directly upon the granite capstones which 
surmount these piers. Instead, it is distributed 
by the system of steel girders, some of them 
8 feet in depth aud 4Y feet long. These are in 
effect big bridges placed between the founda- 
tions and the footings of the vertical columns 
to distribute the weight evenly. The heaviest 
girder in the building, which lies deep beneath 
one wall of the building, weighs over 52 tons. 

Above the surface the building is a mere steel 
framework — a big steel box — built like a canti- 
lever bridge. The walls are comparatively 
light, being hardly more than thin sheeting for 
the skeleton, and, curiously enough, the stone- 
work of the second and some of the higher 
stories was constructed before the wall founda- 
tions were laid, being entirely supported by 
the steel framework. 

As I said before, the dead weight of the 
building itself is about 20,000 tons. But with 




RUSHING THE STONEWORK ON FOUR FLOORS AT ONCE. 

The ReuUtj Building on September 2ith. (Seepage 285.) 



THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER, 303 

the addition of the maximum load which the 
twenty-nine floors are calculated to carry, the 
total weight of the structure will amount to 
something like 61,400 tons. 

There are 950 rooms in the building. Count- 
ing four persons to each office, this will make 
the permanent population of the building nearly 
4,000, or equal to that of many a flourishing 
county seat. To this must be added a large 
transient population amounting probably to 
one person for each resident at any given time 
during business hours. This would make an 
ordinary population, resident and floating, of 
8,000 for this one building! If twenty persons 
visit each office during the day, there would be 
27,000 persons using the building every day. 
The various elevators have daily passenger 
traffic of over 60,000, or more than that of 
many an important railway line. 

It is a curious reflection that if the regular 
occupants of the building were placed shoulder 
to shoulder on the ground that it occupies, 
there would be barely standing room for them ; 
while if all the persons who visit the building 
during a day were gathered on the ground site 
at one time they would make a group standing 
five feet deep on one another's heads. 

The cost of the building was $2,400,000, but 
it will collect more in revenues every year than 



304 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

many a populous county. If a building as high 
and as large could have been constructed by the 
old solid masonry process, it would have cost 
fourteen times as much, and the walls would 
have been so thick at the base that there would 
have been little or no room for oiRces and 
stores. 

The time may come, and come soon, when 
buildings higher even than this one may be 
built. There is nothing in the engineering 
problem to prevent the construction of a fifty- 
story building, but such a sight will probably 
never vex the eye of man. Already various 
American cities are passing laws limiting the 
height of buildings. Moreover, many property- 
owners feel that time should be given to ascer- 
tain how the skyscraper will endure — whether 
the steel will weaken with rust, whether the 
foundations will hold true, whether the fire- 
proofing is efficient. Most skyscrapers are only 
a few years old; but examinations of steel 
columns erected ten 3^ears ago and housed in 
cement, and of foundation beams lying below 
the water-line, have shown that not even the 
blue-black scale from the rolling-mill finish has 
turned color. Wherever it is possible, these 
steels are buried in cement, in itself a rust- 
proofing, and under such conditions the steel- 
ponstructed building promises to stand as long 




STONEWOKK COMPLETE FIRST IN THE MIDDLE OP THE BUILDING. 

The Realty Building as it looked October Sth. (.Seepage 285.) 



THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER. 307 

as the building itself shall be satisfactory to its 
owner and its tenants. 

A great office building is really a city under 
one roof. It has its own electric-lighting plant 
and sometimes a gas plant in addition; it has 
its own water- works system, with a big stand- 
pipe at the top to supply the upper floors, and 
sometimes an artesian well underneath; it has 
its own well-drilled fire department, with fire 
plugs on every floor, and hose-lines and chemi- 
cal extinguishers ; it has its own police depart- 
ment, for ever}^ great building is now supplied 
with regular detectives who watch for petty 
thieves and pickpockets, and prevent peddlers 
and beggars from entering their domain. It is 
even governed like a city ; for the superintend- 
ent is the mayor, and he has a large force of 
workmen always busy cleaning the streets and 
stairways of the big structure. In some of the 
Chicago buildings, Avhere a peculiar glazed 
terra-cotta brick is used for sheathing, the 
walls are washed outside as well as in. In its 
elevators it has a complete system of electric 
railroads, and a very wonderful and intricate 
system it is, too, with automatic arrangements 
for opening and shutting doors, for indicating 
exactly where the car is in its ascent and de- 
scent, and for preventing accidents from fall- 
ing. And there is in many of the greatest 



308 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

buildings a complete express service of cars, 
some cars not stopping below the tenth or some 
other skyward floor. A number of buildings 
there are that have their own telephone system 
as well as connections throughout with cit}- 
lines, their pneumatic- tube parcel and message 
delivery systems, and at least one has a net- 
work of pipes conveying compressed air for 
power, while every great skyscraper is provided 
with one or more telegraph, cable, and district 
messenger offices, so that a tenant sitting at his 
desk can send a message almost anywhere on 
earth by merely pushing a button call for a 
messenger. In the modern mail-chute — a long 
glass and iron tube through which a tenant on 
any floor may drop a letter to the big box in 
the basement — the skyscraper has its own mail 
system. A young Englishman, a friend of 
mine, who was on his first visit to J^ew York, 
stood for half an hour watching the letters flit 
downward through one of these glass tubes. 

'^ That is the most wonderful thing I've seen 
in America," he said; "that, and the little 
tube with red oil in it which tells when the lift 
is coming." 

Many of the modern buildings now have a 
bathroom on every floor, a regular barber- 
shop, a restaurant on the roof, a stand where 
the latest newspapers and magazines, cigars 




KOOF-BUILDING ON THE REALTY STKUCTURE. 

^s it looked October 22d. (See page 285.) 



TEE 2I0DERN SKYSCRAPER. 



311 



and candies may be obtained, with frequently 
a library to which a tenant in ay go when look- 
ing up references or to while away an idle half- 
hour. In the basement there is frequently a 
safety-deposit vault and a place for storing 




DETAIL OF STEEL SKELETON WORK, SHOWING HOW A BIG 
BUILDING IS BRACED AND RIVETED TOGETHER. 

bicycles ; on the first floor, a bank where a busi- 
ness man may keep his money ; and somewhere 
up at the top, not so frequently, a social club. 
And of late some of the great buildings have 
actually been provided with bedrooms and 
bachelor apartments, so that a tenant may 
sleep near his offices if he is busy. Indeed, a 



312 TEE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

man might live in a modern skyscraper year 
in and year out, luxuriously, too, with every 
want richly supplied, and never pass beyond the 
revolving storm doors at the street entrance. 

As to the future of the skyscraper no one 
knows definitely, but all the architects proph- 




JOINING OF BEAMS AND PILLARS. 



esy greater beauty. They are learning how to 
treat these great slim towers so that the effect 
is pleasing to the eye. In times past the neces- 
sity of a fagade from 250 to 350 feet high has 
often resulted in the bold, staring resemblance 
to a chimney, which is both ugly and painful 
to the sight. But the architect is learning to 




READY FOR INSIDE FINISHING. 

The Realty Building on November 5th. {See page 285.) 











W jttfs^ 


^ 








^1; 






jj^ylll 


1 iwif 


Ml' ■])":' sv^ ':-| 




:-^iiii-4^ ^nri 1 






"•^> "^^^1 


■■'■'■■■■■.■/v. ' 8 





SHOWING IMMENSELY STRONG SKELETON WORK OP A TALL AND NARROW 
BUILDING IN BOSTON. 




TNTEllIOR "well" OF A SKYSCRAPER LOOKING UP 

A photograph taken from the bottom of a tall building toward the top. 



THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER. 819 

relieve this tendency by treating the stories in 
groups of four or five. This lessens the effect 
of extreme height. At the same time the 
width is made to seem greater than it really is 
by the addition of heavy cornices and project- 
ing balconies. 

While it is perhaps too much to expect that 
a skyscraper shall become an object of beauty, 
these various devices do much to give the build- 
ing personality and distinction, and perhaps this 
is as far as the architect ever can go. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THKQUaH THE AIK. 



Flying-machine inventors and enthusiasts, 
may be divided into two great classes, each of 
which is certain that it has discovered the only 
straight and narrow path to aerial navigation. 
Those who belong to the first of these classes 
place their faith in the steerable or dirigible 
balloon; they secure their lifting power with 
gas, and seek to control the direction of flight 
by various contrivances of wings and screw 
propellers. They are air soarers. Those of 
the second class go to the bird for their model. 
The bird, they assert, is nature's first and best 
flying machine; and if a bird, which is nearh^ 
a thousand times as heavy as the air it dis- 
places, can soar for hours aloft without tiring,- 
why shouldn't a man do the same, provided 
he can build the proper mechanism? Conse- 
quently these inventors, who have given the 
subject of bird fliglit long and serious atten- 
tion, discard the balloon system with some- 



324 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

thing of disdain, and plan their machines after 
the perfect model of a bird's wing. 

Both of these methods have been thoroughly 
tested, and, what is ]nore, with astonishing suc- 
cess, considering the difficulties which have had 
to be overcome. Balloon flying macliines have 
really been steered, not to the limits of success, 
but far enough to demonstrate that the feat 
can be accomplished. On the other hand, a 




WING OF A SOARING BIIID. 



soaring or aeroplane machine has been con- 
structed and actually made to fly for consid- 
erable distances ; and yet more curious and 
interesting, a number of daring inventors have 
constructed real wings with which they have 
soared with success from hill-tops and high 
walls. 

Both of these methods are, therefore, worthy 
of careful consideration, although in this chap- 



THROUGH THE AIR. 325 

ter I shall take up only flying machines proper 
— the aeroplanes and bird-like contrivances — 
the balloon machines or air floaters coming 
more properly under the important subject of 
ballooning. 

I suppose more inventors have been fasci- 
nated with the idea of building a machine that 
would fly than with almost any other single 
subject, perpetual motion possibly excepted. 
Nearly every town has its flying-machine en- 
thusiast, and the Patent Office at Washington 
is busy constantly with curious designs for 
winged mechanisms; and yet the perfect ma- 
chine, the machine which will one day supplant 
the steamship, bankrupt the railroad, and an- 
nihilate space is yet to be invented. And in- 
vented it positively will be, perhaps by some 
reader of this book; for mathematicians have 
demonstrated its possibility by unerring fig- 
ures, and it only remains for the clever mech- 
anician to build the necessary machinery. 

I shall not try to cover the whole story of 
the flying machine, which is almost as old as 
the inventive imagination of man, for it would 
fill a big book. I shall, rather, describe the 
efforts of a few of the inventors who have 
made the most notable recent achievements. 

Probably no American inventor of flying 
machines is so well known and has been so 



326 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




PROFESSOK S. P. LANGLEY. 

From the painting by Robert Gordon Hardie, 1893. 

successful in liis experiments as Professor S. P. 
Langley, the distinguished secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution at Washington. Pro- 
fessor Langley has built a machine with wings, 



THROUGH THE AIR. 827 

driven by a . steam-engine, and wholly without 
gas Of other lifting power beyond its own in- 
ternal energy. And this machine, to which 
has been given the name Aerodrome (air-run- 
ner), actually flies for considerable distances. 
So successful were Professor Langiej^'s early 
tests, that the United States Government re- 
cently made a considerable appropriation to 
enable him to carry forward his experiments in 
the hope of finally securing a practical flying 
machine. His work is, therefore, the most 
significant and important of any now before 
the public. 

The invention of the aerodrome was the re- 
sult of long years of persevering and exacting 
labor, with so many disappointments and set- 
backs that one cannot help admiring the as- 
tonishing patience which kept hope alive to 
the end. Early in his experiments. Professor 
Langley had proved positively, by mathemati- 
cal calculations, tliat a machine conld be made 
to fly, provided its structure were light enough 
and the actuating power great enough. There- 
fore ho was not in pursuit of a mere w411-o'- 
the-wisp. It was a mechanical difficulty which 
he had to sarmoiint, and he surmounted it. 

Professor Langley made his first experiments 
more than twelve years ago at Allegheny, 
Pennsylvania. He began, not by building a 



328 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

flying machine, but with a thorough investiga- . 
tion into the theory of the flight of birds, in 
order to find out ho^y much power was needed 
to sustain a surface of given weight by means 
of its motion through the air. For this pur- 
pose he built a very large ' ' whirling table ' ' — 
a device having an arm which swept around a 
central pivot, the outer end of which could be 
given a velocity of seventy miles an hour. 
Yarious objects were hung at the end of the 
arm and dragged through the air, until its 
resistance supported them just as a kite is sup- 
ported by the wind. A plate of brass weigh- 
ing one pound, for instance, was hung from the 
end of the arm by a spring, which was drawn 
out until it registered a pound weight when 
the arm was still. When the arm was in mo- 
tion, it might be expected that, as it was drawn 
faster, the pull would be greater ; but Profes- 
sor Langley's observations, strangely enough, 
showed just the contrary, for under these cir- 
cumstances the spring contracted until it regis- 
tered less than an ounce. With the speed in- 
creased to that of a bird in flight, the brass 
plate seemed to float on the air. Preliminary 
experiments of this nature were continued for 
three long years, and Professor Langley formed 
the general conclusion that by simply moving 
any given weight in plate form fast enough in 



THROUGH THE AIR. 329 

a horizontal path through the air it was jwssi- 
ble to sustain it Avith very little ])ower. It was 
proved that, if horizontal flight without friction 
could be insured, 200 pounds of plates could be 
moved through the air and sustained upon it 
at the speed of an express train, with the expen- 




DIAGRAM OP THE FINAL AERODROME. 

diture of only one horse-power, and that, of 
course, without using any gas to lighten the 
Aveight. 

Every boy who has skated knows that when 
the ice is very thin he must skate rapidly, else 
he may break through. In the same way, a 
stone may be skipped over the water for consid- 



330 THE BOY'S BOOK 01" INVENTIONS. 

erable distances. If it stops in any one place 
it sinks instantly. In exactly the same way, 
the plate of brass, if left in any one place in 
the air, would instantly drop to the earth; but 
if driven swiftly forward in a horizontal direc- 
tion it rests only an instant in any particular 
place, and the air under it at any single mo- 
ment does not have time to give way, so to 
speak, before it has passed over a new area of 
air. In fact. Professor Langley came to the 
conclusion that flight was theoretically possible 
with engines he could then build, since he was 
satisfied that engines could be constructed to 
weigh less than twenty pounds to the horse- 
power, and that one Ijorse-power would support 
two hundred pounds if the flight was hori- 
zontal. 

That AYas the beginning of the aerodrome. 
Professor Langley had worked out its theory, 
and now came the much more difficult task of 
building a machine in which theory should 
take form in fact. In the first place, there was 
the vast problem of getting an engine light 
enough to do the work. A few years ago an 
engine that developed one horse-power weighed 
nearly as much as an actual horse. Professor 
Langley wished to make one weighing only 
twenty pounds, a feat never before accom- 
plished. And then, having made his engine, 



THROUGH THE AIR. 



831 



how was he to apply the power to obtain hori- 
zontal speed? Should it be by flapping wings 
like a bird, or by a screw propeller like a ship ? 
This question led him into a close study of the 
bird compared with the man. He found how 
wonderfully the two were alike in bony forma- 
tion, how curiously the skeleton of a bird's wing 
was like a man's arm, and yet he finally de- 




BONES OF A BIRD S WING AND OF A HUMAN ARM- 
ING THEIR CLOSE RESEMBLANCE. 



cided that flapping Avings would not make the 
best propeller for his machiue. Men have not 
adopted machinery legs for swift locomotion, 
although legs are nature's models, but they 
have, rather, constructed wheels — ^contrivances 
which practically do not exist in nature. 
Therefore, while Professor Langley admits 
that successful flying machines may one day 
be made with flapping wings, he began his 
experiments with the screw propeller. 



332 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

There were three great problems in build- 
ing the flying machine. First, an engine and 
boilers light enough and at the same time of 
sufficient power. Secoud, a structure which 
should be rigid and very light. Third, the 




SKELETONS OF A MAN AND A BIRD DRAWN TO THE SAME 
SCALE, SHOWING THE CURIOUS RESEMBLANCE BE- 
TWEEN THEM. 



enormously difficult problem of properly bal- 
aijcing the machine, which. Professor Langley 
says, '' took years to acquire." 

For his propelling power he tried compressed 
air, gas, electricity, carbonic-acid gas, and 
many other sources of energy, but he finally 



THROUGH THE AIR, 333 

settled on the steam-engine, and he succeeded, 
after all manner of difficulties, in building a 
mechanism light enough. He says in regard 
to this part of the work: 

' ' The chief obstacle proved to be not with 
the engines, which were made surprisingly 
light after sufficient experiment. The great 
difficulty was to make a boiler, of almost no 
weight, which would give steam enough, and 
this was a most wearying one. There must 
be also a certain amount of wing surface, and 
large wings weighed prohibitively; there must 
be a frame to hold all together, and the frame, 
if made strong enough, must yet weigh so little 
that it seemed impossible to make it. These 
were the difficulties that I still found myself in 
after two years of experiment, and it seemed 
at this stage again as if it must, after all, be 
given up as a hopeless task, for somehow the 
thing had to be built stronger and lighter yet. 
l^ow, in all ordinary construction, as in build- 
ing a steamboat or a house, engineers have 
what they call a factor of safety. An iron col- 
umn, for instance, will be made strong enough 
to hold five or ten times the weight that is ever 
going to be put upon it; but if Ave try anything 
of the kind here the construction will be too 
heavy to fly. Everything in the Avork lias got 
to be so light as to be on the edge of breaking 



334 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

down and disaster, and when the breakdown 
comes, all we can do is to find what is the 
weakest part and make that part stronger; and 
in this way work went on, week by week and 
month by month, constantly altering the form 
of construction so as to strengthen the weakest 
parts, until, to abridge a story which extended 
over years, it was finafly brought nearly to the 
shape it is now, where the completed mechan- 
ism, furnishing over a horse-power, weighs 
collectively something less than seven pounds. 
This does not include water, the amount of 
which depends on how long Ave are to run ; but 
the whole thing, as now constructed, boiler, 
fire-grate, and all that is required to turn out 
an actual horse-power and more, weighs some- 
thing less than one one-hundredth part of what 
the horse himself does." 

From this it will be seen what tremendous 
difficulties had to be met and solved, and yet 
the machine could not fly independently, al- 
though the mechanical power was there. 

Professor Langley established an experimen- 
tal station in the Potomac Kiver, some miles be- 
low Washington. An old scow Avas obtained, 
and a platform alTout tAventy feet high Avas 
built on top of it. To this spot, in 1893, the 
machine Avas taken, and here failure folloAved 
failure; the machine Avould not ily properly, 



THROUGH THE AIR. 



335 



and yet every failure, costl}^ as it might be in 
time and money, brought some additional ex- 
perience. Professor Langley found out that 




PKEPARIJNGr TO LAUJSiCH THE AEKUDilUME. 
From a photograph by A. Graham Bell, Esq. 

the aerodrome must begin to fly against the 
wind, just in the opposite way from a ship. 
He found that he must get up full speed in 
his eno-ine before the machine wa^ allowed to 



336 



THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 



go, in the same way that a soaring bird must 
make an initial run on the ground before it 
can mount into the air, and this was, for vari- 
ous reasons, a difficult problem. And then 
there was the balancing. 

' ' If the reader will look at the hawk or any 




DIAGRAM SHOWING THE COURSE OF THE AERODROME IN 
ITS FLIGHT ON THE POTOMAC RIVER AT QUANTICO. 



soaring bird," sa3^s Professor Langley, ^'he 
will see that as it sails through the air without 
flapping the Aving, there are hardly two con- 
secutive seconds of its flight in Avhich it is not 
swaying a little from side to side, lifting one 
wing or the other, or turning in a way that 
suggests an acrobat on a tight-rope, only that 



THROUGH THE AIR. 337 

the bird uses its widely outstretched wings in 
place of the pole. ' ' 

It must be remembered that air currents, 
unlike the Gulf Stream, do not flow steadily 
in one direction. They are forever changing 
and shifting, now fast, now slow, with some- 
thing of the commotion and restlessness of the 
rapids below Niagara. 

All of these things Professor Langley had to 
meet as a part of the difficult balancing prob- 
lem, and it is hardly surprising that nearly 
three years passed before the machine was 
actually made to fly — on May 6, 1896. 

'' I had journeyed, perhaps for the twentieth 
time," says Professor Langley, ^' to the distant 
river station, and recommenced the weary 
routine of another launch, with very moderate 
expectation indeed; and when, on that, to me, 
memorable afternoon the signal was given and 
the aerodrome sprang into the air, I watched 
it from the shore with hardly a hope that the 
long series of accidents had come to a close. 
And yet it had, and for the first time the aero- 
drome swept continuously through the air like 
a living thing, and as second after second 
passed on the face of the stop-watch, until a 
minute had gone by, and it still flew on, and 
as I heard the cheering of the few spectators, 
I felt that something had been accomplished at 



338 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

last; for never in any part of the world, or in 
any period, had any machine of man's con- 
structioR sustained itself in the air before for 
even half of this brief time. Still the aero- 
drome went on in a rising course until, at the 
end of a minute and a half (for which time 
only it was provided with fuel and water), it 
had accomplished a little over half a mile, and 
now it settled, rather than fell, into the river, 
with a gentle descent. It was immediately 
taken out and flown again with equal success, 
nor was there anything to indicate that it 
might not have flown indefinitely, except for 
the limit put upon it." 

Only a brief description of Professor Lang- 
ley's machine, a very good idea of which may 
be had from the pictures, can here be given. It 
has two pairs of wings, each slightly curved, at- 
tached to a long steel rod from which hang 
the boilers, engines, and other machinery, and 
the propeller wheels. The hub itself is formed 
of steel tubing; in front there is a little conical 
float to keep the machine from sinking, should 
it fall in the water. The boiler weighs a little 
over live pounds, while the engine, which gives 
one and one-half horse-power, weighs only 
twenty-six ounces. The rudder is arranged 
for steering in four directions — up, down, to the 
right, and to the left, and all automatically. 





THK AERODROME IN FLIGHT, MAY 6, 1896. 
Two views from instantaneous photoijraphs taken, by 4. Groham Bd(^ Esq, 



THROUGH THE AIR. 341 

The Avidtli of the wings from tip to tip is be- 
tween twelve and thirteen feet, and the length 
of the whole about sixteen feet. The weight 
is nearly thirty pounds, of which about one- 
fourth is the machinery. 

So much for Professor Langley's aerodrome, 
the first and most wonderful of machines of its 
kind. Hiram Maxim, the famous inventor of 
the Maxim gun, has experimented on a colossal 
affair of aeroplanes to carry three men — and 
she ran swiftly when her wheels rested firmly 
on the wide rails of her little railroad, but her 
inventor never has ventured to lift her free in 
the air. These two inventions, Langley's and 
Maxim's, have been the greatest efforts toward 
the utilization of the soaring plane. 

The possibility of using wings for flight is 
one of the mqvj oldest of mechanical ideas. It 
is so easy to say, ' ' A bird flies ; why shouldn't 
a man ? " and more than one brilliant inventor 
has been dashed to death trying to answer this 
very question. What boy hasn't read of the 
amusing adventures of Darius Green? And 
yet of late years, wonderful enough, men have 
actually flown with wings, wings resembling 
those of a soaring bird. Only last year Lilien- 
thal, the famous ' ^ flying man ' ' of Berlin, was 
killed from a fall received while he was career- 
ing high above the earth with his great wings. 



842 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

Chanute, an American inventor, has flown suc- 
cessfully with wings; and only recently Har- 
grave, the Australian inventor of the famous 
box-kite, has been making kite-like wings which 




OTTO LILIENTHAL, "THE FLYIJNG MAN." 



he asserts will solve the great problem of prac- 
tical aerial navigation. 

Lilienthal, the flying man, built his wings 
after a long and close study of the flight of 
birds. He finally came to the conclusion that 
a bird is able to sustain itself without apparent 
effort in the air, and even to soar against the 



THROUGH THE AIR. 



343 



wind, owing to the peculiar curved surface of 
its wings. The fins of many fishes and the 
web feet of aquatic birds are strikingly analo- 
gous in construction The sails of a ship as- 




A START FROM A WALL. 

sume a similar form. It would be impossible 
to sail so near the wind in beating if the in- 
strument of propulsion were a rigid flat sur- 
face. It is the effort of the sail to get away 
from the wind Avhich it gathers in its ample 



3i4 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

bosom which drives the boat forward, ahnost 
in the very teeth of the breeze. The flying 
machine devised and used by Herr Lilienthal 
was designed rather for sailing than iov flying, 
in the proper sense of the term'; or, as he once 




LILIENTHAL STARTING FROM A HILL. 



said, ^'for being carried steadily and without 
danger, under the least possible angle of de- 
scent, against a moderate wind, from an ele- 
vated point to the plain below. " It was made 
almost entirely of closely woven muslin, washed 



THROUOII THE AIR. 345 

with collodion to render it impervious to air, 
and stretched upon a ril)bed frame of split wil- 
low, which was found to be the lightest and 
strongest material for this purpose. Its main 
elements were the arched wings; a vertical rud- 




PREPAIIING FOR A START FROM A HILL. 

der, shaped like a palm-leaf fan, which acted 
as a vane in keeping the head always towards 
the wind ; and a flat, horizontal rudder, to pre- 
vent sudden changes in the equilibrium. 

The operator so adjusted the apparatus to his 
person that, when in the air, he either rested 



346 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




SOARING IN A STRONG BREEZE. 



on his elbows or was seated upon a narrow sup- 
port near the front. With the wings folded 
behind him, he made a short run from some 
elevated point, always against the wind, and 
when he attained sufficient velocity, launched 



THROUGH THE AIR. 



351 



himself into the air by a spring or jump, at the 
same time spreading the wings, ^Yhich were at 
once extended to their full breadth, whereupon 
he sailed majestically along like a gigantic sea- 




THE DESCENT. 



gull. In this Avay Herr Lilienthal often ac- 
complished flights of three hundred yards and 
more from the starting-point. 

" Ko one," Herr Lilienthal once explained, 
^'can realize how suhsUmtud the air is until 



352 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 




A, The 
Alighting 
breeze. E. 



OF ONE OP LILIENTHAI/S 

FLIGHTS. 
start. B, The gliding deticent. C. 



still air. D, Course 
, Soaring in strong breeze. 



ten -VI He 



lie feels its sup- 
porting power 
beneath him. It 
inspires confi- 
dence at once. 
With flat wings 
it would be al- 
most impossible 
to guard against 
a fall. With 
arched wings it 
is possible to 
sail against a 
moderate breeze 
at an angle of 
not more than 
six degrees to 
the horizon." 

The principle 
is recognized in 
the umbrella 
form universally 
adopted for the 
parachute. Try 
to run with an 
open umbrella 
held above the 
head and slight - 
Iv inclined back- 



THROUGH THE AIR. 353 

wards, and see what a lifting power it ex- 
erts. 

Lilienthal spent many years of toil on his in- 
vention, and after his final perfected wings were 
finished, it required much skill and strength 
to use them successfully, to guide the direction 
of flight by careful movements of the arms, to 
go up by leaning back, and down by leaning 
forward. And "at the last the inventor himself 
was hurled to his death, but not until he had 
contributed much to the knowledge of aero- 
nautics. 

Mr. Hargrave has contributed to scientific 
information a very clear statement as to why 
a bird is able to soar against the wind, and he 
is using his discoveries as the basis for a new 
invention in flying machines. Ilargrave's idea 
is that the thick forward part of a bird's wing 
acts as an obstruction, like a dam in a river, 
causing a whirlpool below the wing, Avhich 
rolls with great force against the back side of 
this obstruction, thereby forcing it forward. In 
other words, progress through the air is caused 
by an undertow of air. He suggests, there- 
fore, a flying machine shaped somcAvhat in the 
form of a toboggan turned upside down. The 
Avind, striking the edge of the toboggan curve 
in front, creates a Avhirlpool in the inverted hol- 
lo av, and propels the whole machine forAvard 



354 THE BOY'S BOOK OF INVENTIONS. 

and upward, according to the way it is steered 
by the suspended ballast, which determines its 
angle of flight. 

Each year the inventor presses closer to the 
great secret of human flight, each year the 
mechanic is able to build more perfect ma- 
chinery, and the two, working side by side, 
may be expected before many years have 
passed to produce a flying machine which will 
be practically a success as well as an experi- 
mental success. 





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